this post was submitted on 25 Dec 2023
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First time when you ssh into your Linux terminal and you gotta “sudo crontab -e” or something and it’s like “what editor do you want to use?” and nano sounds lame so you choose vim cause the sound is cool when you say it and then you have to wipe the whole comp and start over

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[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 year ago (1 children)

vi isn't a text editor as much as it's a text manipulation language.

It has a syntax, grammar, idioms, and, yes, a learning curve.

But once you learn it, it's as close to a brain-computer interface as I've experienced. You start thinking about edits as chainable operations and it literally becomes muscle memory -- if you ask someone experienced with vi how they just did a complex sequence of edits, chances are they'll have to stop and consciously walk through it because they literally didn't have to think about it the first time.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

got any online course recommendations? my college recommended missing semester for the basics of the basics, but i know there are so many more and other vim workflows (easy motions etc)

although i should first start getting into touch typing

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

In the terminal write ‘vimtutor’, that covers the basics.