My Baby Steps into VIM

I have spent a lot of time attempting to complete the challenging Vim-Adventures, but have found solving the integrated puzzles more challenging actually learning VIM. I am actually still stuck on level 9, I found I needed to learn VIM faster and actually completed vimtutor twice.

Vim-Adventures is definitely one of the best ways to learn muscle memory, as you tend to learn how to move around without even thinking about it. The vimtutor tutorial is definitely one of the best tutorials and covers a lot in a short amount a time. I imagine you can complete the entire tutorial in less than an hour on your first run through.

The entirety of my VIM learning was completed while running the test suite at work, which unfortunately takes about 30mins each time (something we are working on in making better). I decided last week that after spending 2 months learning VIM in small spurts, it was time to actually start using it.

I got a very brief walkthrough after my last TDD  practice session. I got to see tmate.io (actually tmux and not vim, but still a cool tool) working in the wild and even install the JANUS VIM package. Last week I attempted to work on a feature using VIM but quickly found out despite my extensive research and practice, the previous tutorials do not have sections on working through the file system.

I moved on to learning through the free Vimcast and Vim Novice Tutorials which has helped in learning the VIM workflow, like splitting windows and entering and exiting the file system.

I am not yet ready to use VIM at work but I have been working through the Javascript Koans. I am finding that koans is a nice and safe way to learn how much I would rather be using VIM at work. My goal is to switch over when I complete the the entirety of the Koans and become a little more proficient.

If you are at any level interested in try out VIM, either type vimtutor in your terminal or checkout Vim-Adventures. Warning, once you get the initial muscle memory down, you might get addicted.