A good while ago, I read an article by the creator of viemu, clearing up a lot of the misconceptions about vi, as well as explaining why it’s a good idea (and why it’s been very popular for the last 30 years+). The same guy also has a great set of graphical cheat sheets that teach the basics a few bits at a time.
I’m convinced.
I’ve been convinced for the past 2 years in fact. But I still really haven’t gotten around to force myself to learn vi as my primary editor, the learning curve is just too high. When I get down to work, acceptable but immediate productivity (using my current editor) has so far won over tremendous productivity farther down the line (using vi).
Does anybody have any good tips to help get past the learning curve? It can be straight out tips, some other tutorial or article, whatever.
Edit: Note that I’m aware of the vim/gVim, Cream and MacVim (etc.) variants of vi. I kept my question about vi to refer to the vi family as a whole. Thanks for all the great answers.
Update (April 2009)
I’ve been using Vim (more precisely, MacVim) in my day to day professional life since last December. I’m not going back 🙂
Good luck to everyone in their Vim mastery.
60 Answers
First of all, you may want to pick up Vim; it has a vastly superior feature set along with everything vi has.
That said, it takes discipline to learn. If you have a job and can’t afford the productivity hit (without getting fired), I’d suggest taking on a weekend project for the sole purpose of learning the editor. Keep its documentation open as you work, and be disciplined enough not to chicken out. As you learn more, become efficient and start relying on muscle memory, it won’t be as hard to stick with it.
I’ve been using Vim for so long that I don’t even think about what keys to press to search or navigate or save. And my hands never leave the keyboard. To use Vim is one of the best choices I’ve made in my programming career.
