Painless Vim By: Nate Dickson

Author: Nate Dickson

Painless Vim is written by a professional developer who tried to learn vim a number of times before it finally stuck. I kept falling into the same cycle: I’d read a wide a array of books, online tutorials, print-outs, go through all their steps, and in the end get almost nowhere. Then I’d quietly go back to my editor of choice until next time I decided to try it out.

It wasn’t until I started abusing the patience of a fellow developer who was a few months ahead of me on the vim learning curve that I came to finally understand how much power vim actually has to offer. He didn’t try to tell me that I had to do everything “the vim way” or even that I had to give up my favorite editor. Instead he quietly and kindly gave me pointers that I could understand, advice I could appreciate, and encouragement to keep trying. With his help I was surprised how quickly I got comfortable with vim, and how much faster I’ve been ever since.

And now I want to pass that kind of learning along. Painless Vim starts with the understanding that you’re an intelligent, busy person who has to get actual work done along with learning a new text editor. This book is designed to help you get comfortable with vim incrementally, without demanding that you toss your mouse out the window and disable all the keyboard shortcuts you’ve learned over the years. The goal is to introduce you to the 200f vim that you’ll use most often first, and give you pointers to the 80