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Here’s how I “learned” vim and many of the more proficient vimmers I know did too: go through vimtutor (type “vimtutor” on your command line), then write YOUR OWN .vimrc - in vim. Then use it and learn by doing.


I disagree with the notion that you have to write your own vimrc from scratch in order to become a proficient vim user. Don't waste your time pouring over the documentation and trying to get things just right, vim is a pretty old program and a lot of useful config options are not on by default, nor are they easy to understand by a skim of the documentation. There's no point to having a deep understanding of them, because you want them on 100% of the time.

Start by copying someone else's vimrc (vim-sensible [1] is a great starting point) and tweak it as needed. My $0.02 is to avoid plugins until you have used vim for a substantial amount of time.

[1]: https://github.com/tpope/vim-sensible/blob/master/plugin/sen...


I strongly disagree with your disagreement, but that's ok.

Writing my own vimrc from scratch (but obviously referencing others) was by far THE best learning tool for me.


Completely agree -- did the same the other day at the insistence of another Dev.

It's simpler and better at imparting the minimum viable working knowledge of Vim than any online tutorial -- you don't even need a net connection or a web browser. I'm by no means a competent Vim user but I did have the basics after 30 minutes which is what it advertised.




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