Posted by Sébastien Lachance with Comments (0)
I've decided to give a serious try to the like of vi/vim. I have heard a lot of gossip around thoses editors and since it's supposed to increase productivity (and I want to increase my productivity), I decided that I should at least try it for 30 days. I've started this morning and found out that it's a hell of a learning curve.
I've downloaded gVim this morning and used it for all the things that involved typing (except Visual Studio, waiting to be more familiar with it). The first interaction was a little bit strange. I admit I had to use the mouse to start editing since I had no idea at all why I need to type "i" to start typing.
Later that day, I stumbled across the "why page" of viEmu, the author does a good job of clearing things. Mainly the use of the "normal" and "edit" mode. To start writing text, you need hit "i" and as soon as you are finish you hit "Esc" to get you back in navigation mode. The "normal" mode is where you need to stay at all time when you are not typing.
Where I have a lot of difficulty on this first day, is the use of the h,j,k,l keys to navigate through the text file. I'm still trying to apply the mnemonics of the first lesson of the tutorial (h is the leftmost key so you move left, j looks like the down arrow, l is the right most key so it goes right, and then k is up). I have not understood yet how it works since it's seem to go everywhere, but where I want it to go.
And the last things I learned is the :sav command, which is basically the save as function.
I have not picked all the terms correctly since it's only the first day and had not the time to read through all the tutorials. But I'll keep you up to date with my new way of typing.