Vim Learning Resources

It’s been just under two years since I made the switch to using Vim full time, and I can say that it’s been the best thing I’ve done for my programming development.

It certainly wasn’t easy, nor do I think that it is the best thing for every developer to take on.

There might even be some truth to the idea that Vim is a dark, elegant weapon, wielded by neckbeards with whom the Unix is strong.

I do have a beard, but my neck is shaved at least some of the time. But using Vim has served as a powerful gateway for me to think about solutions in an even more ‘Unix-y’ way. This includes becoming more familiar with the terminal, but also more general language tools like Regex — a skill which still elicits feelings of dread and awe when I decide to use it.

Since I didn’t get here all on my own, I thought it would be good to share a few of the resources that I’ve found most helpful for really leveling up my Vim-fu:

Since Vim has such a strong following in the Ruby on Rails world, I really found the Laracasts series to be more applicable to my day to day use as a PHP developer. All in all though, it’s hard to plow through any of these resources once and be done with it. I found myself biting off a chapter here, or watching a screencast there, looking for a way to utilize what I had just learned.

That’s the thing, the concepts only really started clicking when I applied it to real world tasks.

And there’s still more to learn!

My next bit of Vim learning will be working through Learn Vimscript the Hard Way with an eye towards extending this already powerful tool.

With all of this learning I feel as though I’m closer to having something to actually share back. As such, I’m hoping to post more often here about the tools and tinkering I’ve come across, and how they can be leveraged into useful solutions.


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