@TRUGGL, other interested newbs

There are a couple things that never get said with vim, so why not now.

1.) touch-typing is a big plus, but using vim is also a great motivator to learn touch typing. They kind of feed off of each other. It's currently getting me to touch-type on the number row.

2.) Vim isn't a neat-little app; it takes about 2 months to get comfy, and about 4 to start tapping into it's streamlined system. It's taken me about a year and a half to get to looking into vim scripting.

3.) vim is best learned with the official (and very large) vim manual and patience and a large workload. Sure, a keyboard cheatsheet will help you get oriented, but vim's mechanics run *very* deep, and learning more has more to do with finding more efficient methods instead of the usual quick-and-cheap methods

4.) Every effort I've spent on vim is entirely worth it, and the only editor I need other than vim is Eclipse, only because I haven't coded Eclipse's functions into vim.

You bet your ass I will, too.

Caidence

@fadecomic: Completely agree. It has a steep learning curve, but I won't touch another text editor. Once you have the basics down, it's lightning fast!

Those other guys can have their emacs....

PJ_the_jackass

Just imagine doing just about any editing task, including regexp search-and-replace, syntax highlighting, auto-indenting, complex re-arrangements of arbitrary blobs of text, user extensibility, global commands, etc. All, as Blackbeard said without ever having your fingers leave the keys. It's not for everyone, but if you want power (at a price--there is a learning curve) and you hate the mouse, it's for you. Anecdotally, I got into it when I watched my thesis advisor rearrange an entire 2500+ line program in literally seconds using only simple keystrokes. It's the lightsaber of editors. Elegant and powerful, but harder to learn.

fadecomic

@BlackBeard: I keep hearing that Vi(m) is fabulous, but all I've figured out how to do with it is open files, type stuff, save, and exit—which will do for quick configuration file edits over SSH, but isn't especially fancy. Can you point me to a website that explains why Vim is something you'd use instead of, say, TextWrangler or Notepad2?

Much appreciated. :-)

~truggl

truggl

What is the Windows theme used in that screen-shot?

P.S. You guys should do a "Hack Attack" feature on how to use free custom themes (e.g. w/o WindowBlinds) by patching uxtheme.dll.

tomstrummer

It's the best editor in the planet that don't require you to learn finger calesthenics.

BlackBeard

@Ace in the Hole: Agh! It's a text editor. Here's the Wikipedia page. My fault for not saying that in the post. Adding now.

Gina Trapani, Lifehacker Editor

Uhm.... What is it?

Ace in the Hole

for those with macs, vim comes with leopard (and likely tiger).

enter: vim on the terminal window.

:q to quit
:w to save

and :q! to quit with a vengence.

balls187

Vim becomes bad ass once you learn how to use it's uber powerful regex features.

For coding, I still prefer emacs.

balls187

Love vim, use it all the time - but I know only its basic features so far. Every day I learn more though.

invid

I use vim for work. All day, 5 days a week.

Best text editor ever.

Emacs is a nice operating system, but it could use a decent text editor. ;-)

middy

Just found a pic I took when I started work managing an ISP in january. My boss said to me "Learn Vi" and handed me this book. Gota love it! [teqsun.com]

teqsun.com

@azpat: You mentioned windows and buffers. It would probably be useful to have a link that explains what you're talking about.

[www.vim.org]

I used this when I was a code monkey 8 years ago and when I switched to full time system administration kind of "forgot" about it. I recently started using this feature again and it won't be forgotten. :-)

Joshua Timberman

@TRUGGL
Same here, additionally, I use the delete word(s)/lines(s) features to some extent.
Still a newb, I defer to nedit when the going gets tough. But then, most of my files are hardly 100 lines long. I usually view files with more/less (depending on what *nix I am using) and press 'v' if I want to edit the file in vi(m).

draka

Er, I've been carrying Gvim along with me on my USB stick for a long time. No special portable version necessary, as far as I know. I just copied the folders from my hard disk to the stick and that was it. AFAIK Gvim doesn't use any registry entries. It's all in the .vimrc and .gvimrc, AFAIK. Or am I missing something?

Oh, and yes, (G)vim is fabulous!

Edwinek

An addendum....last time I tried gvim it took me a good couple hours just to figure out how to customize the damn fonts on the thing and get them to stick, and to save some sort of preferences. Sigh......

edmicman

I've tried gvim a number of times over the past few years, and it never sticks. What's the point of the humongous learning curve when I can actually get work done in Notepad++? Most of my work is either classic ASP files, or .NET where I work in the VS2005 IDE. I'm just not seeing the benefits of vim, especially if I have to struggle for years with it before it's even useful.

I, too, would like to know that windows theme, though!

edmicman

I'm a big fan of Vim, and just getting started into the more advanced features of it, except that I still haven't found a color scheme I'm completely happy with.
Any suggestions for a programmer who isn't a big fan of back-highlighted text? It really needs to be on a dark background...

JeffCarr

@azpat:
Oooh, thanks!

And, to Jeffcarr, the theme I liked is called "zenburn". "zen", apparently, is some milquetoast crap, and I wish not to be associated with it ^_^

Caidence

@edmicman:
Then you're not a vim guy. Vim users are people that need to edit and nagivate text constantly and get tired of moving their arms to the arrow keys and the page up/down block, and wish death on the ever-present rodent.

If you're comfy with Notepad++, use it. When you start to gripe about speed or your aching arms, that's when you come back to this thread.

@JeffCarr:
I know Cream has a bunch of nifty colorschemes. I thought the "Zen" one was badass.

I, however, just use a VT100 term and PuTTY. I use a slightly custom scheme that spreads the 6 colors around legibly. I do this because I'm a dirty terminal junky and need therapy.

Caidence

@Jeffcarr - Try this page. Has nice screen-shots of over 200 color schemes and a click gets you the .vim file.

[www.cs.cmu.edu]

azpat

(doesn't seem like my last post went through. Quick version:)

@azpat:
Thank you for the link!

@JeffCarr:
The theme is apparently called "zenburn". "Zen" is the name of some milquetoast theme, and I refuse to endorse it.

Caidence

If you like "zenburn", you might also like the "wombat".

mksql

Try the inkpot theme. I think it comes with Cream, so you would have to copy it to the "colors" folder of your gvim installation. It is one of the most comfortable and complete dark color themes around. I have been using it for almost a year now and I do not think I would ever want to use any other colour scheme.

As for useful extensions, ever since I started using GVimPortable I wanted a portable, simple offline calendar I could use on the same USB stick and update from any computer I happened to be using at the time. I found Calendar here: [www.vim.org] and with a minor tweak to my vimrc file, I now have a fully portable calendar I can update on any computer (even across ubuntu at home and xp at work!).

garoux

I know this is not the "traditional" vi editor.. But, for you Windows folks out there it is worth a look.

[www.winvi.de]

Thanks,

Kent

kdyer

the xp-theme featured in the screenshot is Area o4.2 [customize.org]

mfresco