Practical Vim: Edit Text at the Speed of Thought

To be clear, the author stipulates that this book is "a recipe book". So the notion of novice to advanced concepts is a bit out the door, with the exception that individual chapters are designed to go from novice to advanced topics.That being said ... I would classify myself in the novice+ range with Vim. I got this book because I felt I had a firm enough grasp of concepts and could build from there.The unfortunate thing, from someone in my "skill" bracket, is that it is probably more helpful to have some of the core concepts presented earlier. For example some topics in Part III (Getting Around Faster) would be better served being introduced sooner versus later. His suggestion for the novice is to do a first pass (reading only early parts of the chapters) and then revisiting the book later. While the author is no doubt well intentioned, I'm not sure everyone has the time to do multiple passes on the book. He puts the onus on the reader to do all the leg work to find what content works for them.The problem with a recipe approach as well as the "learning curve" of Vim itself is that it is more helpful to learn the actions one will execute more frequently to reinforce the muscle memory. Learning more advanced items becomes easier once the initial struggles of moving around and handling the text editing basics are reasonably understood.What I typically found when reading the book was I was being presented with content that I would simply forget solely because it isn't on my radar as far as thing I do repeatedly. Interesting tips? By all means. Useful at a novice level? Questionable.There are also some cases where the instructions seem off, like the macros/incremental.txt example. I followed the steps but found I didn't get the extra space. I had to add it when recording the macro. This could be "user error", but I did redo this a few times to see where I went wrong, but always ended with the same results. There are other times when there is actually a context change, but it wasn't clear that happened. So the next sequence presented were no longer valid.In general, I think the book was written well and provided some good examples. However if you're a novice or novice+ type individual, you may want to stay clear and get the book once you've crept into the intermediate range.I can't help but think the book would be better served if it was split into a first part which covered basics (advanced people could skip and less advanced could work through that). Then have the more interesting/advanced tips later on. It would allow less skilled folks to get up to speed and not have to sort through what is useful and what is not.

It's not just the tips that made sure I kept a copy of this book around, but also the way they're presented: In practical terms, with examples of where features are useful that are applicable to most developers. Of course it introduces the basics, but I suspect that aspect of the book isn't that interesting for most people buying it (almost nobody is required to use Vim!), it's mostly in tying it all together that this book excels. It will take you from a moderate to intermediate Vim user to a fluent Vim user if you follow its guidance and practice.However, it is unlikely that an advanced Vim user will find anything surprising in here. I keep this around for introducing others to vim or helping existing vim-ers gain skill; I rarely need it myself. It's got a target audience, and it's exquisitely tailored to them.

I love this book and I love Vim. For me Vim is the "Editor (pearl) of Great Price". Matthew 13:46 except Vim is free and the small price of this book is money well spent.This is my second book on Vim, though it is my favorite because of how it does the Tips.I'm working through the book as a mini habit by reading through just one tip a day, and I look forward to each day and getting to spend a little time in this book strengthening my Vim muscles. Today, I learned Tip 52.I wish I would have discovered this book and the Vim editor years ago. "Edit Text at the Speed of Thought!" I never thought using an editor could be so much fun!

The narrative of Practical Vim creates in form an antithesis of what would be expected if one typed "man -k whatever" in XNIX. A hands-on practical experience using VIM is the result. This is contrast to the vague impressions often offered as tutorials in the open source world. It's a useful resource in and of itself. When combined with a vim script reference like learnvimscriptthehardway (dot) com and a committed period of 1-2 weeks study a dedicated reader (with a reasonable background in programming and IT in general) can learn to use the incredibly labyrinthine and sometimes plane old unorthodox VIM into an unmatched tool for anyone who makes their living programming or in data management in general.

The author has a mastery of Vim that is inspiring and the "practical" part of the book is literally that. Incredibly helpful with many, many solutions to minimizing keystrokes and using Vim in a very powerful way to become more productive. I've only gone through half the book so far and I can already manipulate text more quickly and more powerfully than when I use Visual Studio with Whole Tomato. Highly recommend.

If you're a touch typist and not using Vim, you're missing out. Yes there's a learning curve, but give it about three weeks of usage and you'll never go back to: type type type, stop and move the mouse around, type type type.

Having used vi/vim for almost 20 years, I was amazed how much I learned with this book. Required reading for this excellent editor.

I've been studying vim for years and scouring the internet for tips and tricks on how to improve my vim skills. I was pleasantly shocked at how many things I learned from this book. The author's writing and illustrations are so clear too.

This book is incredible. It structured as a collection of tips. Each builds on a concept. Next thing you know when you're editing in vim you're actively thinking differently.If you think it's disjointed, just bare with it. Soon you'll learn all roads lead to Rome.If I want the shortest route - (d5W).If I want the fastest route - (dw.......uu).If I want the picturesque route - (dtxde).If I want the highlighted route - (v6WgEd)Editing in anything other than vim feels burdensome to me now. Once you've mastered the use of macros, buffers/args lists, registers, visual blocks, tags/jumps etc etc etc.Before this book I didn't know what was possible. This is why I'm so impressed by the book & the author for making it so clear and concise.It's made me lazy when I code in VHDL now. My vimrc uses abbreviations when it's a vhdl file. -> ab slv std_logic_vector | ab vv downtoTherefore when typing a port declaration I would dosig_a : dir slv(31 vv 0);I getsig_a : dir std_logic_vector(31 downto 0);To compound my lazy nature I copy an entity to a register V(highlight)"{reg}y I then run macros on this when I need it as a signal declaration/port instantiation.let @a='^yiwf:C=> ^R0,^[j'let @f='Isignal ^[f:wdwj'I honestly can't think of a different way of working. Even IDE's which know your modules and entities etc... and may automatically populate ... can't beat someone using vim who's hunting for and seeking to fix a line of text. Or where vim is very powerful, a repetitive task.

I'm not massively experienced with using vim but this is a helpful book of various tips on using it. I can't say I've finished it yet, or even made a significant dent in it, but what I've read so far has seemed useful. You could realistically learn to use vim from scratch alongside reading this book, although I would recommend doing a little practice first, like running the built in vim tutorial or playing VimAdventures.One thing I will say is only buy this book if you truly plan on using vim regularly. It is the kind of thing that can easily be forgotten without repeated use. I am a student and tried using vim to do one of my projects but just reverted back to using sublime text since I had limited time. If you have a few evenings to spare and a project to work on then I'd highly recommend sitting down with this book in front of a vim session and trying out all of the things he has to share.

Since 10 years ago in college I wanted to learn, and move fully from other IDEs (Eclipse, Sublime, Jetbrains, take your pick) to vim. Although I have been using just the Vim motions on the mentioned tools, I hadn't been able to learn the Vim features, such as jumping to function definitions or files.This resource, makes it possible through the list of the tips, to learn what I had wanted to learn all these years those. That is, the Vim features allowing to code at the speed of thought.Just brilliant.

This book is absolutely amazing. The content and organisation of the material are both impressive.Having used Vim for a year or so, I was essentially stuck at the basics (navigation, search and replace, basic buffer manipulation, etc. - the knowledge necessary to get around and make use of Vim). This book provides the basics for becoming a Vim user, and expands this to cover many additional features that really begins to expand the Vim users skill level.

Great collection of tips, organised in a helpful bite size manner. Can be a bit tricky to find what you need as a result but this isn’t a reference manual, it’s more of a thought provoker / examples of how you can achieve lots with few keystrokes.