6 comments

[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 31.8 ms ] thread
Or you could use the key promoter plugin to tell you what shortcuts are. Sure, you need to find at the first time but then at least you know the location of the action in menu and you don't annoy the hell out of your pair. Or use the find action command: Meta Shift A

http://plugins.intellij.net/plugin/?id=1003

Reminds me of why I like Vim so much: every one of its users has a working set of commands that they know, and provided that enough users are in close quarters and can occasionally watch each other work, they pick up bits and pieces of each other's command sets. (Until they all converge on the entirety of the Vim manual, of course.)

Of course, it also scares non-Vim-users to watch us work so quickly. ;)

I love Vim, too, but I think the method outlined in the article does not work for learning Vim at all. The method basically works because every IDE has a similar standard set of actions, only organized differently. Vim on the other hand has its very own set of actions which does not map to any other application at all (with the possible exception for Emacs).

Thus, whenever a non-vimmer is watching a vimmer he only sees magic happening, but not understanding why or how. It takes an experienced vimmer to learn from other vimmers. This has happened to me a lot, but has not enlightened anyone yet. (Does this imply that IDEs are plumbing and Vim is magic?)

I'd reached a plateau with vim and I was good with it, but knew I didn't have the full power. Then I started doing other things with it than just coding, and it moved me to a whole new level.

I started writing text, stuff like my blog and emails, and suddenly a whole lot of extra commands started to make sense. For example, block commands like '}' and ')', and formatting with 'gqap', and so on. I was now doing really powerful stuff at the word, line, sentence and paragraph levels. Before I could do 'cw' and be happy; I knew there was a 'cW', but who could be bothered. Now I really understand and I can use all that without thinking.

Then I was able to take those new skills back to writing code, so my vim-fu when coding is so much more powerful. It is a whole new level above what I had before.

And sadly, xcode4 appears to not let you use vim as your editor anymore. Not looking forward to next week.
The key assumption here is that you both have someone to pair program with, and that they're patient enough to teach you key commands. I wish I could learn a new IDE this way.