6 ms·

Not to rain on anybody's parade here, but for first-time vim users I recommend not using any plugins and only selectively adding them one at a time after the ba

by mpk 13y ago

Not to rain on anybody's parade here, but for first-time vim users I recommend not using any plugins and only selectively adding them one at a time after the basics (buffers, navigation, some ex mode, etc) are at least somewhat familiar. Getting started with plugins enabled makes it hard to understand where vim stops and plugins begin and make switching to a different (someone else's) vim setup confusing at best. It also tends to feed the 'make it work like the last editor I used' syndrome, which is completely counter-productive. Otherwise, nice work and good job open-sourcing it!

enduser 13y ago
Using vi instead of vim for a while is also beneficial. It keeps one from learning bad behavior like typing 'i' and then hitting the arrow and necessitates learning about marks before being spoiled by the visual modes
efnx 13y ago
I definitely agree. Vim was much more confusing for me while still a beginner, partly because I started with first the spf-13 distro and then haskim, a haskell-focused distro. I didn't really start grasping how things worked until building up my own distro. The funny thing is that most distros I've seen still include many of the same plugins, making the end product only unique in the details. Those details however, are blockers once you're set in your ways...
jlgreco 13y ago
I absolutely agree. Trying to use 'oh-my-zsh bundle' analogues for Vim is absolutely the wrong approach (for that matter, I think oh-my-zsh itself is the wrong approach). There is enough to learn already, blurring the line between what Vim does and what plugins do does not help the situation at all. This said, I think these sort of dumps are great for experienced vim users who can pick through them and find individual fragments that they want to adopt.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
fhd2 13y ago
Agreed, also goes for Emacs. Not a fan of starter kits, they tend to confuse experienced users and newbies alike.
eliasmacpherson 13y ago
That is a sensible suggestion, I would go further and suggest that new users impulsively reject answers to questions "How do I do X in vim" that are "use plugin y" and find a native way of doing it, because plugins will increase the difficulty in working in new environments.
adamesque 13y ago
Completely respect where you're coming from, but totally disagree. I made a few abortive switches to Vim that didn't last a week because my productivity was too hampered and the environment too extreme & foreign. To a newcomer like me, Vim's built-in help was less than worthless, since you pretty much need to know the Vim term for what you're looking up to find it. Googling around wasn't much more effective (there's a lot of garbage in the Wikia for Vim that comes up at the top of many searches). In the end, I needed to read these two "gentle" introductions to Vim to even understand what it was all about: http://stevelosh.com/blog/2010/09/coming-home-to-vim/ http://stevelosh.com/blog/2010/09/coming-home-to-vim/ http://yehudakatz.com/2010/07/29/everyone-who-tried-to-convince-me-to-use-vim-was-wrong/ http://yehudakatz.com/2010/07/29/everyone-who-tried-to-convi... …and then I needed a mostly-well-documented distro like Janus (https://github.com/carlhuda/janus https://github.com/carlhuda/janus) to ensure that my productivity wouldn't take a huge hit those first few weeks. Some folks can probably go all-in cold turkey, but I needed the training wheels.
- textminer 13y ago
  "vimtutor" is pretty gentle. Alternatively, http://vim-adventures.com/ http://vim-adventures.com/ is just fun.
  - IgorPartola 13y ago
    The Gentoo Linux vim tutorial is how I learned. It took me about an hour to become as productive in vim as I was in my previous editors (nano, GEdit, some random Windows editor, etc.) Everything past that was an improvement over any editor I have seen before. I think it is a lot harder for people used to IDE's, but if you treat it as "get to the minimum productivity level as fast as possible, then slowly add more", you will probably enjoy it.
- cgdangelo 13y ago
  > I made a few abortive switches to Vim that didn't last a week because my productivity was too hampered and the environment too extreme & foreign. That was my experience as well. I was pretty comfortable using vim in emergencies but the few times I tried to make it my full-time IDE failed very quickly. Once I stole Gary Bernhardt's dotfiles[1] I was able to stick with it because I didn't have to start from scratch with keymaps, plugins, etc. [1] https://github.com/garybernhardt/dotfiles https://github.com/garybernhardt/dotfiles
ElongatedTowel 13y ago
I'd say that syntax/completion scripts are an exception as they are pretty much mandatory if you're writing code in a language that hasn't made it's way into the official release (and to be frank, there are a lot of gaps).
tokipin 13y ago
as an anecdote, i've been using Vim for almost 10 years and i've never used plugins. the extent of my customization is setting the font/color scheme in the vimrc
typicalrunt 13y ago
Another thing that people often forget when they use plugins on their development machine is that if they happen to ssh into server (or work on another user's machine), it is unlikely that it will contain the same plugins. It is better to become effective at using the bare vi/vim commands first and only use plugins as a time-saver.
- adiM 13y ago
  This is true for using plugins in any editor/IDE. Where do you draw the line. Should I use my own `.vimrc` file and set textwidth, formatting-options, indenting, etc. according to my preference, or don't tweak anything at all because those tweaks will not be available at another user's machine/ssh server? It is relatively easy to have your configuration files on a USB/dropbox and copy them on a new machine if needed.
INTPenis 13y ago
Long time VIM user here and I completely agree, not only for beginners, also for pros. Basically it follows the KISS, and in some sense UNIX, principles. I have never used the vim distros but I have gotten to a point where I just rm -rf'd my whole .vim dir and started over with only the plugins I required at the time. Then added more as I needed them. Of course, I have always managed well without the file browsers many use.
mattschmulen 13y ago
Normally I would agree, foundation first then mature into plugins and add-ons however after looking into Maximum Awesome I believe it will help new users overcome the learning curve frustration that vim is known for; very nice. kind of like a twitter bootstrap for vim

by mpk 13y ago

enduser 13y ago

Using vi instead of vim for a while is also beneficial. It keeps one from learning bad behavior like typing 'i' and then hitting the arrow and necessitates learning about marks before being spoiled by the visual modes

efnx 13y ago

I definitely agree. Vim was much more confusing for me while still a beginner, partly because I started with first the spf-13 distro and then haskim, a haskell-focused distro. I didn't really start grasping how things worked until building up my own distro. The funny thing is that most distros I've seen still include many of the same plugins, making the end product only unique in the details. Those details however, are blockers once you're set in your ways...

jlgreco 13y ago

I absolutely agree. Trying to use 'oh-my-zsh bundle' analogues for Vim is absolutely the wrong approach (for that matter, I think oh-my-zsh itself is the wrong approach). There is enough to learn already, blurring the line between what Vim does and what plugins do does not help the situation at all. This said, I think these sort of dumps are great for experienced vim users who can pick through them and find individual fragments that they want to adopt.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

fhd2 13y ago

Agreed, also goes for Emacs. Not a fan of starter kits, they tend to confuse experienced users and newbies alike.

eliasmacpherson 13y ago

That is a sensible suggestion, I would go further and suggest that new users impulsively reject answers to questions "How do I do X in vim" that are "use plugin y" and find a native way of doing it, because plugins will increase the difficulty in working in new environments.

adamesque 13y ago

Completely respect where you're coming from, but totally disagree. I made a few abortive switches to Vim that didn't last a week because my productivity was too hampered and the environment too extreme & foreign. To a newcomer like me, Vim's built-in help was less than worthless, since you pretty much need to know the Vim term for what you're looking up to find it. Googling around wasn't much more effective (there's a lot of garbage in the Wikia for Vim that comes up at the top of many searches). In the end, I needed to read these two "gentle" introductions to Vim to even understand what it was all about: http://stevelosh.com/blog/2010/09/coming-home-to-vim/ http://stevelosh.com/blog/2010/09/coming-home-to-vim/ http://yehudakatz.com/2010/07/29/everyone-who-tried-to-convince-me-to-use-vim-was-wrong/ http://yehudakatz.com/2010/07/29/everyone-who-tried-to-convi... …and then I needed a mostly-well-documented distro like Janus (https://github.com/carlhuda/janus https://github.com/carlhuda/janus) to ensure that my productivity wouldn't take a huge hit those first few weeks. Some folks can probably go all-in cold turkey, but I needed the training wheels.

textminer 13y ago
"vimtutor" is pretty gentle. Alternatively, http://vim-adventures.com/ http://vim-adventures.com/ is just fun.
- IgorPartola 13y ago
  The Gentoo Linux vim tutorial is how I learned. It took me about an hour to become as productive in vim as I was in my previous editors (nano, GEdit, some random Windows editor, etc.) Everything past that was an improvement over any editor I have seen before. I think it is a lot harder for people used to IDE's, but if you treat it as "get to the minimum productivity level as fast as possible, then slowly add more", you will probably enjoy it.
cgdangelo 13y ago
> I made a few abortive switches to Vim that didn't last a week because my productivity was too hampered and the environment too extreme & foreign. That was my experience as well. I was pretty comfortable using vim in emergencies but the few times I tried to make it my full-time IDE failed very quickly. Once I stole Gary Bernhardt's dotfiles[1] I was able to stick with it because I didn't have to start from scratch with keymaps, plugins, etc. [1] https://github.com/garybernhardt/dotfiles https://github.com/garybernhardt/dotfiles

ElongatedTowel 13y ago

I'd say that syntax/completion scripts are an exception as they are pretty much mandatory if you're writing code in a language that hasn't made it's way into the official release (and to be frank, there are a lot of gaps).

tokipin 13y ago

as an anecdote, i've been using Vim for almost 10 years and i've never used plugins. the extent of my customization is setting the font/color scheme in the vimrc

typicalrunt 13y ago

Another thing that people often forget when they use plugins on their development machine is that if they happen to ssh into server (or work on another user's machine), it is unlikely that it will contain the same plugins. It is better to become effective at using the bare vi/vim commands first and only use plugins as a time-saver.

adiM 13y ago
This is true for using plugins in any editor/IDE. Where do you draw the line. Should I use my own `.vimrc` file and set textwidth, formatting-options, indenting, etc. according to my preference, or don't tweak anything at all because those tweaks will not be available at another user's machine/ssh server? It is relatively easy to have your configuration files on a USB/dropbox and copy them on a new machine if needed.

INTPenis 13y ago

Long time VIM user here and I completely agree, not only for beginners, also for pros. Basically it follows the KISS, and in some sense UNIX, principles. I have never used the vim distros but I have gotten to a point where I just rm -rf'd my whole .vim dir and started over with only the plugins I required at the time. Then added more as I needed them. Of course, I have always managed well without the file browsers many use.

mattschmulen 13y ago

Normally I would agree, foundation first then mature into plugins and add-ons however after looking into Maximum Awesome I believe it will help new users overcome the learning curve frustration that vim is known for; very nice. kind of like a twitter bootstrap for vim