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Silica6149

259 karma · joined June 22, 2022

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Silica6149··on Show HN: I built an interactive course that helps you learn Vim faster
I see, I could add a whole chapter on useful vim plugins! Thanks for the suggestion!

In addition to surround, what other plugins do you think beginners should almost always use?

Silica6149··on Show HN: I built an interactive course that helps you learn Vim faster
Thanks for the guidance! I'll look into how typingclub works, I'm new to this business stuff.
Silica6149··on Show HN: I built an interactive course that helps you learn Vim faster
Hey I'm on a mac too, but I can't seem to reproduce the bug. Perhaps there is a safari extension, or a native application that is interfering?

Sorry I wasn't much help, please let me know if you've found a solution, I'm curious what caused this.

Silica6149··on Show HN: I built an interactive course that helps you learn Vim faster
Huh, thanks for letting me know, no one else has mentioned this issue, and I haven't experienced the issue either.

Can you let me know which browser and OS you're using? This seems like an important bug, thank you.

Silica6149··on Show HN: I built an interactive course that helps you learn Vim faster
Yes, in a narrow sense. I would say I know it well enough now to edit code faster than using a regular editor.

It would be difficult for a lot of people to say they've fully learned vim though, since it has a lot of things to discover. Many people who've been using vim for years still find out new tricks. This aspect of vim is appealing, in a way.

Silica6149··on Show HN: I built an interactive course that helps you learn Vim faster
I kind of get where they're coming from, but I hope all my messages in this thread have made it clear: If you want to learn vim, please try all the available free resources before considering vimified, or any other paid option.

I used vimtutor and openvim and they were great starters!

It was only when I tried to find something to fix my specific problem that I stated in the top comment, did I build this.

Silica6149··on Show HN: I built an interactive course that helps you learn Vim faster
Definitely try out the free resources for learning vim before ever considering Vimified, or any paid option!

I used vimtutor and openvim to get started, and they're fantastic free resources.

It was only when I couldn't find something to fix my specific problem that I stated in the top comment, did I start building this.

Silica6149··on Show HN: I built an interactive course that helps you learn Vim faster
Thanks for the feedback! The 8 lessons you mention are actually 8 chapters.

There are actually 34 lessons right now (you can see the lessons if you click on the chapters to expand them).

Please let me know if there are topics that you want to see, I wanna add what people want to learn!

Silica6149··on Show HN: I built an interactive course that helps you learn Vim faster
Thanks for asking, I initially had them like you suggested but with the way I was doing it, it made it kind of hard to make responsive. For the hero especially, the words didn't line up without lots of adjusting.

I'm not really good at css though, so there's that.

Silica6149··on Show HN: I built an interactive course that helps you learn Vim faster
Hey, sorry the landing page is a little unclear.

You gain access with the email you use to purchase (the buy button is all the way at the bottom, which I could with improving its location). Thanks for letting me know!

Silica6149··on Show HN: I built an interactive course that helps you learn Vim faster
Nope. If you're already comfortable in your code editor of choice and like it, there's no good reason to switch.

However, if you've seen people use it in real life or in youtube videos, and think that it's cool being able to execute precise and fast commands without needing to move your hands from the keyboard, to edit code exactly how you want to, definitely try it!

Silica6149··on Show HN: I built an interactive course that helps you learn Vim faster
Thanks for asking, I actually have practiced vim on shortcutfoo.

It is really good for remembering shortcuts for regular desktop applications, but I felt that it wasn't really meant for learning a code editor like vim.

It did not have an interactive code editor, with the ability to edit lines of code inside of it. In addition, it does not measure progress in terms of speed and # of keystrokes, so you aren't able to see how you could improve. If I recall correctly, it is just meant for remembering the command keystrokes and typing them out (kind of like using flashcards).

Also, as of right now, shortcutfoo is $8 monthly, but it allows access to all shortcut courses.

Please correct me if I'm wrong, I used shortcutfoo a few years ago.

Silica6149··on Show HN: I built an interactive course that helps you learn Vim faster
Yup. I had tried to use vim and quit because I thought it was needlessly cumbersome.

What changed my opinion was watching videos of people using vim on youtube that made me interested in learning it for real. It made me realize how much more efficient it could be.

Silica6149··on Show HN: I built an interactive course that helps you learn Vim faster
It can also be a boon. One of the things some vim users like is always being able to discover something new, after using it for years.

I'm not really in this camp though, I would prefer vim commands to somehow be more "discoverable".

Much easier said than done, though.

Silica6149··on Show HN: I built an interactive course that helps you learn Vim faster
I think most people would agree with you. Being comfortable in your editor of choice and knowing the shortcuts in it will already make you faster than trying to use vim from scratch (at least for a while). Vim definitely needs to be practiced and used more frequently to get up to the same speed as regular editors. However, you can reach (an arguably) faster speed in vim.
Silica6149··on Show HN: I built an interactive course that helps you learn Vim faster
Thanks! If you wanted any features that are missing, let me know!
Silica6149··on Show HN: I built an interactive course that helps you learn Vim faster
On it!

Edit: hmm, can't find any errors. Can you reply with the first 3 letters of your email? You can also contact me via the email located at the bottom of the page.

Silica6149··on Show HN: I built an interactive course that helps you learn Vim faster
Definitely a hurdle to overcome for beginners.

Although, it would help to show beginners exactly why abandoning the mouse will be better in the long run. It wouldn't do well for them to always rely on it in place of more efficient commands. Some people might always use the arrow keys instead of hjkl, for example, when hjkl will be better in the long run since they are on the home row.

Silica6149··on Show HN: I built an interactive course that helps you learn Vim faster
Oh yes, when I was trying to fully learn vim, I had the mentality that I could just practice it for 10 minutes a day and be able to use it while editing code.

The remaining time I would edit code like normal with vscode, so it turned out that I wasn't really able to pick up vim and use it well.

It wasn't until I switched to a different keyboard layout that I decided to move over to vim cold turkey, and was actually able to learn vim and retain it.

Silica6149··on Show HN: I built an interactive course that helps you learn Vim faster
I think they were speaking from a total beginner's perspective, and how to get them up to speed as fast as possible.

I felt the same way when first learning vim, since it was completely different from the code editors I'd used in the past, it was strange not being able to use the mouse in the way I was used to.

Silica6149··on Show HN: I built an interactive course that helps you learn Vim faster
Ah, I see. I agree, more context would be better for the beginner to understand why the lessons are the way they are.

I tried to explain the benefits of vim in the "Why Vim?" section, but I should really go into why using and learning vim will be slower at first than using the editor you're already comfortable with, and how it might be worth it in the end.

Thanks for the feedback!

Silica6149··on Show HN: I built an interactive course that helps you learn Vim faster
Hi, I understand where you're coming from. My introduction to vim was through vimtutor and it was free!

I agree with your point about muscle memory. Learning !== muscle memory. However it does make it more comfortable to edit code by not having to expend energy remembering the vim command to do something (since you can just focus on editing code). Practicing new vim commands in the interactive editor has helped me use them faster when coding. I feel that my muscle memory is built faster when practicing in a targeted way.

The interactive editor aims to bring the skills you develop while practicing in it, into your daily code editing, by making you practice on code snippets (for all the lessons after the first 2).

In addition, in my opinion, vimtutor and :help are slightly difficult for a complete beginner to parse because they overwhelm with a little too much information. I tried to fix this by making each lesson focused on a single topic, with short and simple explanations.

Thank you for your feedback, I appreciate it!

Silica6149··on Show HN: RemoteFriendly – A remote job board inspired by HN
Interesting, but if my legal information is still shared with the company, what are the benefits of getting paid in crypto?
Silica6149··on Why do people not notice our enormous, prominent, clear and contrasting banner?
This would be a good idea for a speculative fiction novel, about how constant access to the internet could drive our evolution.
Silica6149··on Ask HN: Is attitude more important than knowledge?
I think the transition from being an employee to being an entrepreneur is difficult, because of the different skill sets required. In a company, you usually have a specified role, with the hard problems mostly figured out by the people before you, and it's just up to you to execute your assigned tasks.

Entrepreneurship is really the full stack of trying to find a problem and solving it along with all the details of running a business.

Silica6149··on Ask HN: Is attitude more important than knowledge?
Yeah, that bit is a little concerning. The world owes you nothing.

Each one of us gets dealt a hand in life for most things, and we can't usually ask for another hand. It's up to us to make the best plays possible.

Being born in this era, in an English speaking country, with access to internet, etc, it's hard for me to feel like I'm owed anything.

Silica6149··on Ask HN: Is attitude more important than knowledge?
Talking about luck, I think attitude plays into this since entrepreneurship has more failures than successes, and sometimes it's just a game of luck.

The important thing is, in the face of failure, do you give up? Or do you persevere?

Silica6149··on Show HN: PocketBase – Open Source realtime backend in one file
Nice!

It looks like you put a lot of work into this, what was the motivation behind this project? Did you not like the existing solutions available?

Silica6149··on 4th Gen KDE Slimbook – Linux Ultrabook with an AMD Ryzen 7 5700U
While I agree that my laptop gets used plugged in most of the time, it is nice for it to last a while for the occasions when I'm away from an outlet (which I argue would be the primary benefit of using a laptop).
Silica6149··on Taking action against scraping for hire
I think it's like Google vs Alphabet. Alphabet is the parent company like Meta.

As for why their domain is facebook for their news site, not sure why. It would make for sense for it to be under meta instead.

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