Vim Learning

This is the ninth post in my series on using Vim to do C# development. You can read the introduction into why someone might want to do that here.

At this point we have a very flexible, fast, and relatively easy to use environment for editing, all within Vim. As you can see, Vim is not the type of editor that does everything you want out of the box. The Vim philosophy seems to be: be capable of doing everything, but make no decisions on behalf of the user. In other words, where other software would have picked a bunch of defaults that they thought were best, Vim does nothing and lets you pick what you want. The downside is it takes time, and it can be hard to even know features exist. The upside is you can configure it just how you want it, and I get 9 blog posts out of it.

This post is about how you find out what Vim can do, and how to setup it up. Basically, this is how I figured out all the things in the last 8 posts.

#1 Vim Help
The best way to learn about Vim, what it has to offer, and how to configure it is to browse around the help. Just do :help and start navigating around. Make sure you read the first section of help.txt as it teaches you how to navigate the help. The most important thing to know is that CTRL-] follows a link ("tag") and CTRL-T takes you back.

Also, read :help help_context as it teaches you how to find help on the commands in a certain Vim mode (normal, visual, insert, etc).

If you're looking for something specific, but you don't know what vim calls it my best advice is to just not get discouraged. Keep fishing with :help , trying different possible words. Don't be in a hurry. Stay in the mind set of browsing around. Read what you land on, if it doesn't look right keep looking for clues before giving up. Frequently all you need to know is Vim terminology.

#2 Google
When fishing through Vim Help fails you, try Google. This may teach you the terminology you needed. If so, dive back into the Vim help.

#3 Vim Tips
The Vim Tips Wiki is the next best place to go. Here you'll find all kinds of stuff people have come up with that might be helpful for you. Most of the scripts I've written are simply adaptations of scripts I found on the Vim Tips Wiki. These can be somewhat scattered. You'll frequently have to read through all the "duplicates" because each will have slight variations. Generally you can get what you want by picking between the variations.

#4 Vim Scripts
The Vim Scripts page is similar to the Vim tips but contains more robust scripts rather than simple tweaks and tips. This is where you'll find things like the Snippets script.

#5 Real People
Sometimes you just can't get an answer on the web or from the help. In those cases, it's best to ask someone who may have more experience. I've had a lot of help from the guys on the Vim IRC channel (server: freenode, channel: #vim). If you don't have an IRC chat program I recommend ChatZilla which is an AddOn to Firefox.

Armed with this, you should be able to get Vim to do anything it's capable of. So if you come up with (or come across) any cool or useful scripts/tips/etc, please let me know!