>Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something.
> learning Vim has nothing to do with muscle memory and doing it outside of Vim is pointles
He fairly expressed his opinion of the OP's project. I don't agree with this opinion, but let's not be such snowflakes. The commentator did not insult the creator.
johncoltrane gave the same feedback last time, so I don't see how this is supposed to be helpful to OP. [0]
Plus I think it's great that he's suggesting to all readers free alternative for learning.
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.
See this definition for muscle memory from Wikipedia:
"Muscle memory is a form of procedural memory that involves consolidating a specific motor task into memory through repetition, which has been used synonymously with motor learning. When a movement is repeated over time, the brain creates a long-term muscle memory for that task, eventually allowing it to be performed with little to no conscious effort. This process decreases the need for attention and creates maximum efficiency within the motor and memory systems. Muscle memory is found in many everyday activities that become automatic and improve with practice, such as riding bicycles, driving motor vehicles, playing ball sports, typing on keyboards, entering PINs, playing musical instruments, poker, martial arts, and dancing."
I don't see why Vim commands would be any different from typing on keyboards, or playing a musical instrument. They are tactile, and rely on motor control.
> and doing it outside of Vim is pointless
I see no reason at all why this should be true. Does the tool let the learner use keyboard to practice memorizing the commands, and they produce the exact same effects as inside Vim? If yes, then by what claim do you say it is pointless? A claim that this tool isn't "the real Vim" feels like a "no true Scotsman" fallacy.
This whole comment reads like sour grapes. Are you mad that it isn't free? Just come out and say that. Perhaps reference Socrates, and how he was angry at the suggestion he charged money for education. Or just point out the free resources and leave it at that. No need to attack him so strongly.
And before someone else says it, yes, I wrote a book about Vim, and no, it isn't free ;)
They are not tactile and they don't rely on motor control. It's typing them on your keyboard that is tactile and relies on motor control. I make use of muscle memory to type these words, not to decide what to type. Learning Vim is learning how to decide what to type, learning how to type it or to type it quickly is just learning typing.
The "memory system" mentioned in that quote is definitely involved in learning and using Vim but the other "system" mentioned, the "motor system" only deals with _typing_ things. The real hero, here, would be the "language system" in charge of assembling commands.
> I see no reason at all why this should be true.
And yet it is.
> Does the tool let the learner use keyboard to practice memorizing the commands, and they produce the exact same effects as inside Vim? If yes, then by what claim do you say it is pointless?
The learner can do all that within Vim itself so why do it outside Vim, which is freely available and comes with an extensive yet very approachable tutorial that goes way beyond what is offered in those online knock-offs?
Again, the tool in question only seems to cover very basic topics that are not going to help anyone "master Vim" anyway so why bother with it at all?
And again, learning Vim, let alone "mastering" it, has nothing to do with muscle memory and rote learning at all.
Vim itself comes with everything one needs to learn it. Learn Vim in Vim.
> Are you mad that it isn't free? Just come out and say that.
Well, I noticed that it went from $25 to $10 between posts. Who knows? Maybe it will be free by the third repost? Whatever the cost, the claims are false and there are much better ways to learn Vim anyway.
> No need to attack him so strongly.
Persons curious about Vim don't really need to be fed outlandish claims and promises one can't deliver either.
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!
An issue keeping me from wanting to use this: holding down the directional keys doesn't move the cursor multiple times - it's one keypress per movement. In the desktop environment, one can hold 'j' to go down, and since there is so much vertical movement, it's important that that's replicated.
Can you let me know which browser and OS you're using? This seems like an important bug, thank you.
Sorry I wasn't much help, please let me know if you've found a solution, I'm curious what caused this.
If only Vim itself was an interactive editor.
> 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.
Except I mentioned :help user-manual, which is built-in and offers a very gentle, progressive, learning curve. Not overwhelming at all.
Vimtutor only introduces the basics and :help, assuming you mean "the reference manual" as opposed to "the user manual", is not suitable for the first steps of learning at all: most of it is really just a reference for when you are not quite sure about the specifics of a command or function.
> I tried to fix this by making each lesson focused on a single topic, with short and simple explanations.
Not much more than the user manual, then, and judging by the lesson titles, quite less.
Same as the last time you posted it: learning Vim has nothing to do with muscle memory and doing it outside of Vim is pointless. Plus, the "master Vim" claim is dubious given how basic the lessons seem to be.
:help user-manual is easy, built-in, and it goes way beyond this. And it's free.