Beginner to Master
Beginner
Symptoms
- You are awkward with the keyboard.
- You switch from mode to mode against your will.
- Vim moves your cursor and changes your text against your will.
- You don’t know how to perform a number of tasks, some very basic.
- You have to think a lot to make the very basic operations.
- You are about to quit Vim every second.
Advices
This period lasted about a week or two for me. Don’t give up. Keep trying.
You need to set timeoutlen to a large value (5000 i.e. 5 s).
You need to use visual selection to for performing the operations (e.g.: d, y)
You rely undo u and Ctrl o to be back on your feed.
Limit the number of plugins that you install to the list of basic plugins. Read the Beginner Plugins section.
Apprentice
Symptoms
- You start to be more comfortable with the keyboard.
- You start to use
jandkin all the programs you have. - You are searching for solutions for all the basic tasks you were used to doing with your text editor.
- You are eager for plugins for all the tasks.
- You discover that a number of programs/websites support
j,k,/. - You use the
tandfmotions more frequently. - You search for program’s plugins that let you use these key commands.
Advices
This period lasted about 2 years for me. Be patient.
Read the section to learn about
Use the Tridactyl Firefox browser plugin.
Here are some alternatives:
- Vimium-FF
- Surfingkeys for Firefox
- Surfingkeys for Chrome
Mature
You are quite comfortable with the keyboard.
The behavior of Vim starts to be understood.
You know the mistyping you did and why your text has changed or your cursor has moved.
You are using more and more the Vim standard features, in particular you start to use the count modifier (e.g. 4e)
You know in which program you are and switching mindset (you can start to use the old programs again)
You are using the range option of the operations (e.g.: d, y) instead of the visual selection (apart to override a
text with the content of the clipboard).
Advices
Expert
Symptoms
I don’t know yet.