Vim Attempting

Back in February, I decided I wanted to be better at using vim. I patiently made sure I could go through the vimtutor quickly. I played a handful of vim games such as vim-adventures and pacvim. I did the Open Vim tutorial. I created a repo for managing my *nix configs including my .vimrc. I tried some tutorials. I started using more of the vimium features when browsing. I was making progress.

Heck, I even kinda understand what is going on when I type q: instead of :q

Then, I tried using vim to build stuff as a replacement to vscode and PyCharm. This was frustrating. While it seems there is a vim first approach for everything, there are still too many things I can do quickly and efficiently with my IDEs that I can’t easily do without. I tried a vim extension for vscode which I loved at first, but when my editor started misbehaving, I disabled the extension and the problem went away. sigh

While running through this experience I discovered a new distraction. Typing practice. Feels weird to say, but I really enjoyed it. One of the vim guides I went through recommended getting better with the keyboard as part of the learning experience. That led me down a new rabbit hole consuming what was supposed to be my vim practice time. More on that later.

My favorite idea from this whole adventure was from Learn Vim The Smart Way

You don’t learn how to ride a bike by reading a guide about how to ride a bike. You need to actually ride a bike.

Still more to learn. Who knows how long it will take me to get there? Eventually I hope to be able to pop wheelies and climb mountains with this bike!

At least I wrote this post using vim 😅