Ask HN: What Vim habits did you need to unlearn?

Posted by WonderAlmighty on Wednesday December 18, 2024 @06:42AM
from the ask-hn dept.

If you don't use Vim, know that it has probably the steepest learning curve of any text editor (or at least non-IDE editors) and many users pick up habits along the way they need to unlearn.

I'll start: I need to unlearn pressing `i` when I mean to press `a`. `i` moves one character back while `a` doesn't which is what I want most of the time.

And apparently many users need to get used to `h j k l` over arrow keys, though I already binded `CMD h j k l` on my mac since that's much more efficient than arrow keys.

( 8 comments | 4 points | on HN )

Re:Ask HN: What Vim habits did you need to unlearn? by Twizzlewhisker on Wednesday December 18, 2024 @07:23AM (#42449910)

I use `:wq!` every single time instead of `:x!`, and I think of it every single time. The muscle memory is faster than me recalling to use something different.

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Re:Ask HN: What Vim habits did you need to unlearn? by wruza on Wednesday December 18, 2024 @07:38PM (#42457122)

Why do you need ! that often? Also ZZ (which I never use).

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Re:Ask HN: What Vim habits did you need to unlearn? by djaouen on Wednesday December 18, 2024 @07:04AM (#42449816)

`I` and `A` for opening at the beginning and end of lines respectively (rather than `0i` and `$a`)

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Re:Ask HN: What Vim habits did you need to unlearn? by qup on Wednesday December 18, 2024 @10:00AM (#42450946)

I press ESC twice instead of once every time I want to get out of insert mode.

And the real problem is I have a binding to do ESC with 'jk' instead, but I always forget to use that one.

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Re:Ask HN: What Vim habits did you need to unlearn? by djaouen on Wednesday December 18, 2024 @12:19PM (#42452506)

> And the real problem is I have a binding to do ESC with 'jk' instead, but I always forget to use that one.

I can remember to use `jk`, but I can never remember to use `.` for repeating the last edit. :(

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Re:Ask HN: What Vim habits did you need to unlearn? by qup on Wednesday December 18, 2024 @01:09PM (#42453134)

most people do `jj`, i thought i was the outlier.

I use '.' a lot, but not nearly as often as I could if I planned my edits a little better.

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Re:Ask HN: What Vim habits did you need to unlearn? by djaouen on Wednesday December 18, 2024 @01:20PM (#42453240)

I picked up both habits at my first job in the industry. That was over 12 years ago now!

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Re:Ask HN: What Vim habits did you need to unlearn? by wruza on Wednesday December 18, 2024 @07:45PM (#42457158)

Not particularly a vim habit but doing this:

  function foo() {|

  function foo() {
  }|<esc>O<sp><esc>x

  function foo() {
  ....
  }

I know that I can just {<cr>}, and then o/O any time, but for some reason I want that empty indented line which I delete half of the times anyway.

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