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Ask HN: What Vim habits did you need to unlearn?

4 points by WonderAlmighty ↗ HN
If you don't use Vim, know that it has probably the steepest learning curve of any text editor (or at least non-IDE editors) and many users pick up habits along the way they need to unlearn.

I'll start: I need to unlearn pressing `i` when I mean to press `a`. `i` moves one character back while `a` doesn't which is what I want most of the time.

And apparently many users need to get used to `h j k l` over arrow keys, though I already binded `CMD h j k l` on my mac since that's much more efficient than arrow keys.

9 comments

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djaouen
`I` and `A` for opening at the beginning and end of lines respectively (rather than `0i` and `$a`)
Twizzlewhisker
I use `:wq!` every single time instead of `:x!`, and I think of it every single time. The muscle memory is faster than me recalling to use something different.
wruza
Why do you need ! that often? Also ZZ (which I never use).
qup
I press ESC twice instead of once every time I want to get out of insert mode.

And the real problem is I have a binding to do ESC with 'jk' instead, but I always forget to use that one.

djaouen
> And the real problem is I have a binding to do ESC with 'jk' instead, but I always forget to use that one.

I can remember to use `jk`, but I can never remember to use `.` for repeating the last edit. :(

qup
most people do `jj`, i thought i was the outlier.

I use '.' a lot, but not nearly as often as I could if I planned my edits a little better.

djaouen
I picked up both habits at my first job in the industry. That was over 12 years ago now!
wruza
Not particularly a vim habit but doing this:

  function foo() {|

  function foo() {
  }|<esc>O<sp><esc>x

  function foo() {
  ....
  }
I know that I can just {<cr>}, and then o/O any time, but for some reason I want that empty indented line which I delete half of the times anyway.