Vim Novice Tutorial Videos
Splitting Windows – There’s vertical splits and horizontal splits. Split horizontally with :split or CTRL-w s and vertically with :vsplit or CTRL-w v.
Closing Windows – You can close with :close or CTRL-w c.
Switching Windows – Change windows with CTRL-w h, CTRL-w j, CTRL-w k or CTRL-w l.
Switching Windows (continued) – You can also switch to the “previous” window with CTRL-w p.
Switching Windows (continued again) – If you want to jump around windows a bit quicker then you can pass a numeric argument to the CTRL-w {motion} command such as 5CTRL-w k to move up 5 windows.
Moving Windows – If you want to reposition a window to another spot, you can use the CTRL-w H, CTRL-w J, CTRL-w K or CTRL-w L commands.
Focusing a Window – If you want to de-clutter your workspace and make the current window the only visible window then you can hit CTRL-w o.
You can check out my mappings for dealing with windows in the vimrc section.
How to use the Help System
See it straight from Vimeo at How to use the Help System.
What we’ll cover
How to get in to help – :help, :h or F1.
How to navigate – CTRL-] moves you into a hyperlink and CTRL-T moves you back in your hyperlink history.
How to jump to a topic – :h <topic-name> jumps you straight to the topic.
Tab completion for help – Using :set 'wildmenu' to help you complete on the help command.
Grepping through the help – :helpgrep searches through the help documentation and :cwindow shows you the results in a very cool way.
Of course, use :help on any of the above topics for more information on that topic.
Page 3 of 3 | Previous page
Giuseppe Caruso:
September 23rd, 2009 at 12:24 pm
It is great to see these videos. They are a way better to follow (thanks to keystroke on screen) and to understand (speaking slowly). Thanks once again.
abchernin:
October 4th, 2009 at 9:04 am
Oh, man! O-o-o-oh, MAN! You’re the best =)
Anton Chikin:
October 29th, 2009 at 8:01 am
Porn for programmers, as my girlfriend says :)
Derek Wyatt:
October 30th, 2009 at 1:10 pm
I don’t get it. You’re a programmer, AND you’ve got a girlfriend, AND she’s cool with you watching porn?? Dood… you’re a rare breed of “lucky man” :)
Cray Elliott:
November 4th, 2009 at 5:50 pm
HOLY CRAP. I knew VIM was powerful but I had no idea until I watched that first video. I’m going to watch all of them and learn this. This tool looks like if it got any smarter it could write C better than I can!(though perhaps it already can :P)
Anton Chikin:
November 5th, 2009 at 12:28 pm
She is a programmer too, that’s the clue :)
ode:
November 7th, 2009 at 1:34 pm
I switched to vim about a year ago. I went through the interactive tutor and learned the basics but it did not go as far as this series does. I considered getting a book but I thought there would be too much stuff I’d never use to wade through to get to the good parts.
But your videos are covering all the stuff I want to know and are a manageable length. They are giving me encouragement to learn more.
I will work my way though all of them I’m sure.
Thanks so much.
Derek Wyatt:
November 8th, 2009 at 5:15 am
Not a problem. These videos aren’t intended to replace the help, or the books that are out there (and there aren’t many, unfortunately), but to do exactly what you’re using them for… smooth the learning curve and help people get a thirst to learn more.
The fact of the matter is that Vim is very complicated and many people say that it’s a negative quality of the editor, but I disagree. There is extreme value in learning (anything), not just to expand your knowledge of a particular tool but to expand your level of knowledge as a whole. If it were easy to learn, it wouldn’t have much value in the first place…
Getting to know Vim at Lucas’ playground:
November 9th, 2009 at 6:07 am
[...] Vim Novice Tutorial Videos – Nice screencasts, might be a little long for some of you, but it’s fun and requires zero previous knowledge. [...]
Mitko:
November 27th, 2009 at 7:48 am
Really cool introduction, you are an artist
Stimul8d:
November 27th, 2009 at 8:13 am
Just the fact that you’ve taken the time to do these videos is great. I haven’t even watched them yet but I’m looking forward to it. I’m using VS2005 and VimEmu so it’s gonna be interesting to see how my productivity improves as I’m already a keyboard shortcut king using the normal bindings,…hopefully I’ll reach the point where i can be at least as productive using vim and then get faster from there.
Lucas:
December 7th, 2009 at 10:36 pm
Your videos are the best that I saw. I like them. Good job!
Jacobi:
December 13th, 2009 at 5:27 pm
I would love to get my hands on a non-Express edition of visual studio so that I could run VmiEmu with it, but since I’m not paid for my C++ programming, I don’t see me buying Visual Studio Pro and VimEmu for my non-profit coding. Though one can always dream. :-)
Nice to see someone making vim videos that can be sent to people to convince them to get something more powerful than their current editors.
Vim is awesome! | Here it is.:
January 10th, 2010 at 9:20 am
[...] these vim tutorials, a guy who has likely changed me [...]
John Gallagher:
January 13th, 2010 at 4:54 pm
Derek
Thank you so much for putting these videos out there. I’ve only seen the first one, but I’ve got a hunger to know more, so they obviously worked!
At the moment I’m coding a Cocoa app and so I’m stuck with Xcode and I *hate* it. It seems designed to annoy me. There’s so much to rant about, but they don’t even seem to have basic moving around sorted.
Vim seems really elegant – one of the many problems is that seeing as I’m such a beginner I’d really miss code completion, although I did see a plugin made for this very purpose.
At the moment, I desperately need to crack on with developing my app as it’s slow going and now isn’t the right time to be learning a whole other editor, but as soon as I have something out there that’s working and my basic coding knowledge is a bit more complete, I’ll definitely be checking this out to see how/if it can integrate with Xcode in the ways I want.
Thanks again for making Vim more accessible to newbies.
nix:
January 24th, 2010 at 5:12 pm
You are a sick, sick, man; yes that is a compliment from one of your southern neighbours; who doesn’t believe Canadians live in Igloos.
I either:
1) Learn something new
2) Refresh me on an old technique.
3) See a way of using a technique that I never saw as useful; now it is.
PS: Can’t wait to see if you cover the “z” commands; that’s up there with H,L,M; well for me it is. :-)
PS: igloos ….. lol..
You’re awesome; keep up the great work.
Wiesiek:
January 25th, 2010 at 4:32 pm
Wowoweewa! I’m affraid I just fell in love with vim ;) Your videos are awesome!
All the best!
Wiesiek
nix:
January 27th, 2010 at 11:49 am
Adding comments after hitting the return key. I think it’s in video 1 where Derek hits the Enter key and the comment is automatically entered into / onto the next line.
For those who can’t wait for the sequel. This is what I figured out; do help on:
help formationtions
That is the setting that’s got to be changed. Now the settings for formations will lead you to fo-table. Either use the hyperlink or type:
help fo-table
Vims default is set to “tcq” type: set formatoptions and it will verify it. Now just change your entry in your .vimrc file with all the options that you want; but to get the continuation of commenting; you must add the “r” option: set formatoptions=cqr
Regards to all and once again thanks Derek for the great videos / tutorials.
Bala:
January 31st, 2010 at 1:45 am
Hi Derek,
Very good videos for improving thirst for vim learning.
I like especially the last video on help system which motivates to learn things deeply and own.
I have a one question.
I could see in your videos cursor change in accordance with the mode.
Is it a default setting or do we need to modify .vimrc file?
Thanks,
Bala.
Derek Wyatt:
January 31st, 2010 at 6:45 am
Hi Bala,
That’s the ‘guicursor’ setting (see :help guicursor). It’s a complicated little setting so I’ve posted mine at “My Vimrc File”. Head there and look for the ‘guicursor’ lines. I broke it up into multiple lines to make it more readable but in truth you could set it with just one line.
Bala:
January 31st, 2010 at 12:02 pm
Thanks Derek,
It could n’t work out for my case.
Look’s like that configuration will work only in case of VIM-GUI.
Although I compiled VIM with GUI option enabled, but I use only normal vim as I am restricted.If you know any other alternative, please let me know.
With regards,
Bala
Derek Wyatt:
February 2nd, 2010 at 2:58 am
For non-gui I don’t think you can do anything… that’s one of the reasons the gui version is better :)
Chris:
February 2nd, 2010 at 8:11 am
Derek, these videos are excellent. I’m a veteran coder, but I’ve never really used vim as my primary editor. I’ve known and used vi for decades (from my sysop days 30 years ago). But I never really explored vim. I’ve squeezed quite a bit of power out of other tools (like emacs), but I’ve never pushed through the “wall”. Your videos are what I needed to push me out of stasis. I wish I’d explored vim YEARS ago!
Thanks!
Chris
Dave:
February 6th, 2010 at 6:29 pm
Chalk up another convert to VIM.
I’ve avoided VI in the past, it just didn’t seem worth the effort…. But you’ve shown me the light! ;-)
Thanks for all the time and effort you put in to these, it’s appreciated!
—
Dave
crispycode » CC Links 17:
February 25th, 2010 at 1:04 pm
[...] Rails Hosting Services - Vim Tutorials on ShowMeDo - Vim Screencasts on Ruby Head – Vim Novice Tutorial Videos by Derek Wyatt - Rails Metrics: Engine for tracking various metrics related to a Rails 3 [...]
redtricycle:
March 1st, 2010 at 9:40 am
Great! I haven’t used buffers at all, and had a foray with Netbeans-with-Vim-integration.
I am TOTALLY going back to Vim and using buffers instead.
HKN:
March 24th, 2010 at 8:12 am
Hey mate, tnx for the vids – got me beond the basic of my vim for sure!
viper:
April 11th, 2010 at 2:07 pm
love your videos!
you make a emacs user wanna switch back to vim :P
keep the videos coming
Links para melhorar as habilidades em vim « blog.saulo11.com:
April 14th, 2010 at 9:25 pm
[...] http://www.derekwyatt.org/vim/vim-tutorial-videos/vim-novice-tutorial-videos/#Welcome http://weierophinney.net/matthew/archives/164-Vim-Productivity-Tips-for-PHP-Developers.html#extended http://www.koch.ro/blog/index.php?/archives/63-VIM-an-a-PHP-IDE.html http://phpslacker.com/2009/02/05/vim-tips-for-php-programmers/ [...]
yuri:
April 15th, 2010 at 1:00 pm
hey derek, excellent videos!
I got a question: is it possible to delete multiple buffers by evaluting an expression? e.g :bd *txt
D. Yim:
April 19th, 2010 at 7:31 pm
OMG! Was that a Yamaha EWI that you pulled out in that first vid? (I remember your first exposure to ver. 1.0 back in the day… OCVI). It was great to see you in your element… and that you’re still the D.Q.W. I remember. Cheers buddy :)
Derek Wyatt:
April 20th, 2010 at 5:55 am
Hi yuri,
Sorry about the long wait on the reply – I’ve been without internet access for a month (stupid phone company problem) but I’ve managed to log in elsewhere :)
There’s no easy way to do this, that I know of but there may be a plugin that can do it… Rather than waste my time looking, I just wrote up this little script instead. It was just a quick script but it should suffice for what you need. Drop it in your vimrc, either restart Vim or reload the vimrc and then you can run
:DelBufferPat *.txt.function! DelBufferByPattern(pattern)redir => knownbuffers
silent ls
redir END
let nums = []
let pat = a:pattern
if pat[0] == '*'
let pat = '.' . a:pattern
endif
for buf in split(knownbuffers, '\n')
if buf =~ '"[^"]*' . pat. '[^"]*"'
let bufnum = substitute(buf, '\s*\(\d\+\).*$', '\1', '')
call add(nums, bufnum)
endif
endfor
if len(nums) == 0
echoerr "No buffers match " . a:pattern
else
let command = ":bd " . join(nums, ' ')
execute command
endif
endfunction
command! -nargs=1 DelBufferPat call DelBufferByPattern("<args>")
Sorry about the lousy formatting on that, but you can blame WordPress :)
Derek Wyatt:
April 20th, 2010 at 5:58 am
It’s an EWI, yes, but not Yamaha. Akai makes the EWI and Yamaha makes the WX line – and the WX line is garbage.
Garbled » Blog Archive » Vi Improved:
May 6th, 2010 at 2:54 pm
[...] now it’s easy. @adambair mentioned this blog post by Derek Wyatt. It’s a collection of videos he made introducing you to the most basic [...]
beatbreaker:
May 29th, 2010 at 5:02 pm
Hi Derek,
These videos are fantastic, I really appreciate the time and effort you’ve gone to here, learning VIM is hard when just reading from a list of commands off the screen I always would pick a couple, use them, and then forget the next day. Watching this I think you could probably teach anything, and I can finally learn how to VIM properly!
I’d like to know what you screen cast with? I use Jing a lot but it’s nothing compared to what you use! Also do you think it’s possible to attach example files for us to practice VIM on? I’m more of a sys admin and not a programmer, so it’s important for me to know VIM but I don’t have so many files lying around all in different code.
adamsiddhi:
June 21st, 2010 at 2:55 pm
Lets do this!
martin:
July 4th, 2010 at 4:37 am
great stuff Derek!
Videotutoriales de VIm (ingles) | Coders Venezuela:
September 6th, 2010 at 7:55 pm
[...] ENLACE [...]
Vim! « shanedowling.com:
September 10th, 2010 at 12:43 pm
[...] all of these vim tutorials, a guy who has likely changed me [...]
Dmitriy Novotochinov:
September 14th, 2010 at 6:58 am
Thank you, Derek, for the great stuff! :)
Helped me much to adopt to VIM and finally switched from TextMate.
TruViet911:
September 15th, 2010 at 9:43 pm
this guy is fucking beast. ur the man man. i laugh as hell
Linux:
September 23rd, 2010 at 11:46 pm
Any new videos to further continue this ?
rne1223:
October 4th, 2010 at 12:01 am
How would you copy and paste from the clipboard. For instance I would like to copy some lines from vim-minimal into firefox and vice-versa. The reasont that I ask is because yy doesn’t copy to the clipboard. I know there is something like “+x “+y, but isn’t there something better?
Derek Wyatt:
October 4th, 2010 at 12:28 am
The easiest way is to use the mouse. Generally Vim is configured to copy text hilighted with the mouse to the clipboard (@*) as soon as it is hilighted. Normally I’d say don’t use the mouse but since your using firefox anyway, you may as well use the mouse.
rkid:
October 16th, 2010 at 3:40 pm
Great stuff man! Thank u a lot for your great work!
max:
October 27th, 2010 at 6:07 am
Vim don’t copy text highlighted with the mouse to the clipboard. Why?
Derek Wyatt:
October 27th, 2010 at 6:32 am
Not to be glib, but it kind of depends on the Vim distribution you’re using and what OS you’re on. But, the net is full of answers on this – go to google.
dbld:
November 18th, 2010 at 3:47 am
Have been getting issues with vimeo cant see the content…
any alternative places to view this or ides what to look out for with vimeo?
***newVIMer:
November 26th, 2010 at 1:47 pm
I don’t really know what to say……. Why did I waste so much time using clunky text editors and over engineered IDE’s? Learning this will propel my PYTHON thinking.
Rick:
December 10th, 2010 at 11:24 am
…can’t thank you enough, Derek.
Great spirit. Great info. Wonderful giving and sharing of knowledge.
Kudos to you.
Rick
Ben:
December 23rd, 2010 at 7:46 pm
These videos are SO helpful. Thank you!
Now I’m learning fast and loving VIM.
One thing I think would be great to cover in later videos is omnicomplete/autocomplete, and customizations that deal with that sort of stuff. I think that’s a common thing people fear about switching to VIM from IDE’s.
Karti:
December 28th, 2010 at 9:41 pm
Great Video. I was using nano and now I have moved to vim, thanks to you. One thing I would like to know. How do I paste some text copied from a website into vim. I am using your vimrc file.
Karti:
December 29th, 2010 at 3:42 am
Please avoid my last request. I found the solution.
:set paste
i cmd+v
:set nopaste
now another question I am having. :-$ You showed us different colorscheme and the window was well colored, even the spaces and blanks.
When I am trying to use :colorscheme I am getting color only on the places where there are texts and rest is black, even the spaces between the texts. Can you please help me in this regard?
Hien:
December 30th, 2010 at 2:54 pm
Karti, if you are using vim in a terminal, you need to make it use 256 colors. Add this to your .vimrc
set t_Co=256
Thanks for the videos =)
The Windows Power User Compendium | Turtle Log:
January 3rd, 2011 at 5:52 am
[...] I can’t do this code editor justice in a paragraph. I will write an article just about Vim some day, extolling its many awesome features and kick-ass plugin community. If you want to get an idea of what it’s capable of, start with these great videos. [...]
Jan:
January 17th, 2011 at 2:04 am
Thank you so much for the great and instructive videos that are also great fun to watch. My experience is that it is is really hard to stay away from the arrow keys, but this vimrc entry helped me alot:
” stop using the arrow keys
map i f**k
map i f**k
imap f**k
imap f**k
Jan:
January 17th, 2011 at 2:12 am
Oh no, html ate my keys. Insert the key identifiers for “up”, “down” … after each map command !
Rylie:
February 6th, 2011 at 3:19 pm
Hi, Derek. In Basic Editing (screencast 2), when you were talking about visual block mode (^v), you went a little too fast on how you did the inserting of back into the selected block. You did the insertion 2 ways, the non-gv way and the gv way. I watched that part multiple times observing closely your keystrokes and the their effect on the text to try and understand what was doing what, and it was really hard to follow what caused what to happen because the keystrokes were being shown on the lower right corner and the effect on the upper left- both of which were flying by. I really want to understand what you did because it was way cool (i.e. useful). So, do you mind explaining that part again (both the non-gv and the gv way), slowly- i.e. say what keystrokes you hit and what resulted from those commands. Thanks so much for sharing, and your time doing so.
Rylie:
February 6th, 2011 at 3:25 pm
Oops- in my previous comment (above), I meant: “the inserting of back into the selected block”.
Rylie:
February 6th, 2011 at 3:30 pm
Oh I get it! It’s not letting me enter anything surrounded by the “less than” and “greater than” signs. Okay, let’s try that again …
In my previous comment (above), I meant: “the inserting of <silent> back into the selected block”.
Derek Wyatt:
February 6th, 2011 at 3:44 pm
I believe (if I checked the right spot in the video) that all that is, is simply marking with CTRL-v, then jjjjj (or 5j) and then I
<silent>ESC (shift-I, then “<silent>” then hitting escape). All that ‘gv’ does is save me hitting CTRL-v5j.Rylie:
February 6th, 2011 at 4:37 pm
Wow, quick response!! Thanks, Derek.
Turns out what confused me was that I couldn’t tell (at first) that you typed an ‘I’ (upper case i to insert). It looked like you typed an ‘l’ (lower case L to move right, which didn’t make sense). So when I tried it, it didn’t work for me (duh). After experimenting some more, I realized what I was doing wrong, tried A (to append), and it worked- THEN I realized it was an uppercase ‘i’ that you typed (which made much more sense).
I do have another question though- why does plain ole ‘i’ or ‘a’ (lower case, to insert/append) not work to accomplish the same thing, i.e. to insert before/after the selected [visual] block?
Anyway- these are wonderful instructional videos! Thanks again for all the work you put in to making and sharing them (for free even!) and for your responsiveness. You rock.
Derek Wyatt:
February 6th, 2011 at 5:04 pm
I’m pulling this one out of my ass and I’m on my BlackBerry where I’m too lazy to surf through the docs, so I might be wrong. However… Think about what “i” does in normal mode – it starts inserting at the cursor position. “I” on the other hand inserts at the beginning of the line.
When you’re in block mode, where’s the cursor? Nowhere, really. Thus “i” doesn’t make much sense. “I”, however makes great sense because it translates to “insert at the beginning of the block”. And similarly for “A”.
Rylie:
February 6th, 2011 at 5:29 pm
Ah! I guess the way I thought about it was, when you select a [visual] block then that selected block becomes the object (the entity) to which an operation is applied, so I expected i and I, a and A, to produce the same result because they, in essence, are operating on the same object (the selected block). But, looks like I wasn’t thinking the vim way- cursor position vs line. Thanks for clarifying.
Rylie:
February 6th, 2011 at 10:55 pm
Re: tabbing thru list of buffers
Hi, Derek. In “Working with Many Files (Screencast 1)” @ minute 10:05, you talk about tabbing thru a set of buffers with “:b tab tab tab”. This did not work for me- i.e. “:b tab tab tab” did not present me with the capability of tabbing thru a set of files as you show in your video.
This is what you got – see http://noodleworx.com/public/yours.png, and this is what I get – see http://noodleworx.com/public/mine.png. Are you using a plugin or some special vimrc configuration to achieve this “tabbing thru buffer” functionality?
Thanks!
Rylie:
February 6th, 2011 at 11:50 pm
Re: tabbing thru list of buffers
Aha! Looks like I have to set the following to enable this behavior:
set wildmode=longest,list,full
Thanks!
Maciej Litwiniuk » Do VIMa wprowadzenie krótkie:
February 16th, 2011 at 12:28 pm
[...] Derek Wyatt – nie wiem co koleś brał przy kręceniu tego, ale najwyraźniej mocno go to podjarało. Link do sekcji beginners, w menu na blogu pozostałe odnośniki [...]
Brian:
March 17th, 2011 at 3:24 am
Hi Derek. I’ve “um’ed and ah’ed” over using Vim for web development for years, but thanks to your screencasts, I now have the courage and determination to develop a non-drupal version of my website, solely using Vim as my editor of choice (using Gedit ONLY if I get too frustrated).
PLEASE continue the good work.
Resources to get started with Ruby, Rails, VIM and bash shell « Ruby Newbie:
March 25th, 2011 at 5:33 am
[...] To learn vim: I saw all the vim videos on this blog [...]
Of code and color » Beginning Vim:
March 25th, 2011 at 10:38 am
[...] yourself, PeepCode has the Smash Into Vim series (2 x $12). The alternative are Derek Wyatt’s craaaazy vim novice screencasts* – these are funny, too! Vimcasts have videos that cover interesting information to [...]
Grant:
April 4th, 2011 at 7:04 pm
You are my hero. Thank you so much for this series.
Uzer:
April 24th, 2011 at 1:03 am
Hey guy, you rock! Amazing videos, they pushed my productivity.
robert:
April 27th, 2011 at 5:27 pm
love your videos and thanks for your none less than ultimate in vim tutorial
whats the difference between vim and emacs?
which is the daddy of all editors for programmers?
Gonna have to start using Vim | ruebenramirez.com:
May 7th, 2011 at 12:27 pm
[...] http://www.derekwyatt.org/vim/vim-tutorial-videos/vim-novice-tutorial-videos/ [...]
links for 2011-05-11 « sySolution:
May 11th, 2011 at 8:00 am
[...] Vim Novice Tutorial Videos – Derek Wyatt's Blog (tags: vim) LikeBe the first to like this post. [...]
DSIW:
May 13th, 2011 at 10:36 am
Hello Derek,
first, thank you very much for this funny videos! You made a very good job!
I have a question: if you are insert “:b tab tab tab”, then you get a list of buffers. These list is in the separator of the command-line and the area of file. How can I do this in my vim? Another question: I like your separator with the many informations about the current linenumber or the buffersize. How can I get this in my vim, too?
Thank you!
Derek Wyatt:
May 13th, 2011 at 4:46 pm
Check my vimrc file for both of those answers:
set wildmenu
set guicursor
http://www.derekwyatt.org/vim/the-vimrc-file/my-vimrc-file/
My Personal Journey of Switching to Ruby on Rails – Environment « Hapless Harry's Haphazard Happiness:
May 17th, 2011 at 5:40 pm
[...] keyboard shortcuts. By switching to VIM, I have to start learning all the modes and commands. These video tutorials helped me a lot during my VIM [...]
Guillem:
May 24th, 2011 at 2:54 pm
I took a pretty extreme decision this week : I’ll no longer use a mouse to navigate in my source code \o/ Even my operating system is keyboard friendly tanks to “Awesome Window Manager” and Debian.
So much precious time wasted to quest around in menus and stuff, to wait for the poorly written IDE to respond, to load the fancy user interface, to drag around windows in order to see what’s hidden behind, to expend sidebars, etc…
You sir saved my day! Thanks a lot for those amazing tutorials!
:wq
vim-Plugin: EasyGrep « DSIW | 01000100010100110100100101010111:
June 5th, 2011 at 4:08 am
[...] des Plug-ins angesehen werden. Wie man sich in einem Hilfedatei von vim bewegt, wird in diesem Video [...]
CK Developers Community » Blog Archive » Vim – как основной редактор кода:
June 13th, 2011 at 12:18 am
[...] ли вы про Vim? Нет, тогда зайдите на блог Дерека Уайта, который утверждает, что все редакторы а-ля Ноутпад в [...]
the_benefited_one:
June 29th, 2011 at 10:10 pm
Thank a lot, derek.
I borrowed a VIM book from the library, in order to make a ‘jump’
from being a novice-vim-user to a -vim-user
and improve my C programming speed/productivity.
Of course the book has been good and very helpful, but
only watching it all in action with your voice/humour-guided-tour gives
me that real ‘jump-a-bility’… once again thanks a lot for
your contribution to the community :-)
hutchins:
July 21st, 2011 at 9:33 am
I love it! Now I’ve got no excuse not to use VIm anymore.
indrolm:
July 22nd, 2011 at 2:19 am
it’s FUNTASTIC!!
Ryan:
August 14th, 2011 at 4:07 pm
Dude, thank you. I’d be stuck in a Shepard’s tone of misery if it weren’t for these videos.
Dho:
August 22nd, 2011 at 3:27 pm
Hey man, these videos are fantastic.
Thank you very much for doing this, it’s an absolute slingshot into better programming.
Rabi:
August 29th, 2011 at 2:22 am
Here is a list of some interesting plugins for Web Developers, you will surely save a lot of time..
http://www.fortystones.com/vim-plugins-web-developers-programmers/
blaine:
August 29th, 2011 at 7:21 pm
Surprisingly, your website crashes my computer every time i go to it. i have some kind of ram overlapping thing going on, and flash seems to trigger it. you have so many videos that your background messes up and corrupts all of the images and icons in my browser and desktop! not your problem at all, i just found it interesting. no other website, so far, has given me that much information about what exactly is causing my x server to crash.
thanks so much for the videos. very well made and i really like how you focus on actual practical reasons for loving vim. So far i have played with vim but no “understood” it other than knowing it had a learning curve. your videos are showing me exactly why people use it and how to become productive. your enthusiasm shines through as well. keep it up, and thanks again. -blaine
Marcus Kazmierczak:
August 31st, 2011 at 9:51 pm
Thanks for the useful tutorials! I’ve been using vim for years but still learning new ways.
I appreciate the effort you put in to share all the info.
Quora:
September 2nd, 2011 at 1:17 pm
Vim macros — a demonstration…
I am only now discovering the powerful feature that is macro recording in Vim and wanted to share a real world example where I used it to help write an answer. By breaking down the steps and keystrokes, maybe it will help the new Vim user discover this…
habs:
September 10th, 2011 at 7:00 pm
hey dude, have my babies. really.
Bryant:
September 26th, 2011 at 9:44 am
AMAZING! You sir, have just opened my eyes to the world of VIM.
Put vim to background « Ore no mirai:
September 27th, 2011 at 12:02 pm
[...] In the mean time I’ve become more accustomed to vim in general. I’ve found a great site explaining a lot about vim and it really pays of watching his movies. LD_AddCustomAttr("AdOpt", [...]
Rahul:
October 3rd, 2011 at 3:25 am
Amazing resource to learn and master Vim. Great job. Thanks a lot !
Getting VIM setup for Ruby on Rails — Shaun Ambrose:
October 7th, 2011 at 12:04 pm
[...] http://www.derekwyatt.org/vim/vim-tutorial-videos/vim-novice-tutorial-videos/ [...]
Videotutorial zum Editor Vim | IT-Kostenlos.de:
October 30th, 2011 at 12:55 pm
[...] und sind in drei Schwierigkeitsstufen eingeteilt (Novice, Intermediate, Advanced). Dabei sind die Anfängervideos zu Vim insgesamt über 120 Minuten [...]
Web Development articles, tutorials, help » Blog Archive » Happy Birthday Vim, The Venerable Text Editor Turns 20:
November 2nd, 2011 at 12:10 pm
[...] If you’d like to try Vim online, check out knowvim, a Javascript implementation of Vim that you can use right in your browser. If you decide to dive in and teach yourself Vim, be sure to watch Derek Wyatt’s fabulous series of screencasts: Vim novice tutorials. [...]
Vim Maniac:
November 2nd, 2011 at 3:51 pm
VIM is G.O.A.T. ( The Greatest Of All Time )! Can you do video on the .vimrc file? What does your .vimrc look like?
Derek Wyatt:
November 2nd, 2011 at 3:53 pm
Head over to https://github.com/derekwyatt/vim-config and have a look.
Happy Birthday Vim, The Venerable Text Editor Turns 20 | t3knoDorKs:
November 2nd, 2011 at 7:18 pm
[...] If you’d like to try Vim online, check out knowvim, a Javascript doing of Vim that we can use right in your browser. If we confirm to dive in and learn yourself Vim, be certain to watch Derek Wyatt’s fanciful array of screencasts: Vim beginner tutorials. [...]
El editor Vim celebra sus 20 años – Happy Birthday Vim ! | ESPACIO DE PROGRAMACION II:
November 4th, 2011 at 4:32 am
[...] right from within your web browser are interactive tutorial @ openvim.com and the Know vim. Also head over to Derek Wyatt’s Blog and check out the Vim novice tutorial videos he has [...]
AlexFromBelgium:
November 5th, 2011 at 4:11 am
Hey derek,
I just wanted to thank you for doing these tutorials!
I’m an IT student from Belgium and we use visual studio and notepad++ at school… So yeah…
You rock
VIM – Vi IMproved en textredigerare | fedora.se:
November 7th, 2011 at 3:47 am
[...] Under tiden som denna utvecklas kanske man vill veta hur man redigerar filer så kan man titta här [...]
beriukay:
November 14th, 2011 at 5:02 am
I started programming about a year ago. I started using Vim about 3 months ago. These pointers really solidify my understanding, and alert me to things I never knew (like * and #), and explained why / does what it does in command mode. Thanks. And please stop yelling at me about arrow keys! I don’t use them, and every time I use a slow method, I go back to where I was and do it over again in a better way as a form of training and punishment.
steve:
November 26th, 2011 at 2:34 pm
Delivery was a little irritating, but thanks much. You distilled it to the things you need to be productive. Too often in Vim tutorials, the obscure stuff gets thrown in and that distracts from what you absolutely have to know. Either that, or the tutorial stops without dealing with concepts like buffers, windows, and help. Thanks for putting together a useful bag.
Derek Wyatt:
November 26th, 2011 at 2:39 pm
Heh :). Yeah, sorry about that. I was in a weird mood when I made those – I’d probably do them differently today. But the bottom line is that whatever mood I was in was the mood that made me do them in the first place so it is what it is. I’m glad they were helpful, though…
Jay Wolters:
December 2nd, 2011 at 11:11 am
I found your enthusiasm about VI to be energizing – I didn’t think it was “irritating” at all. Thank you for the tremendous effort of putting together these Tutorials. This was my first exposure to VI or VIM and I highly recommend your site to my developer friends.
vim-Plugin: EasyGrep | DSIW:
December 3rd, 2011 at 10:17 am
[...] des Plug-ins angesehen werden. Wie man sich in einem Hilfedatei von vim bewegt, wird in diesem Video [...]
rogwilsmith:
December 11th, 2011 at 11:05 am
Good one! nice and good site.
rongbo.jin:
December 14th, 2011 at 10:33 pm
I try to watch the vedio but it gives me a blank screencast and when i turn to “http://vimeo.com/6342264″ it says “the connection was reset”. Any suggetions? thanks in advance.
Derek Wyatt:
December 15th, 2011 at 2:59 am
Not really… if you’re watching on Linux, you can probably expect that the flash player is a problem. Try updating flash, using a different browser (maybe chrome?) or switch operating systems :)
okobaka:
January 2nd, 2012 at 1:18 pm
Long time ago, about 2004 i stuck on elvis a.k.a. vi, and always was for me big question – why those “plugins”/addons don’t want to work. Used keyboard macros + vi + os functionality, but today i forced myself to merge some code/scripts/programs directly into vi and found You and “Vim 101 hacks” book. Now i know that vi and vim are as similar as different.
Saw your 1st podcast, and looks like, it will be a lot of fun … hehe
It will take some time to watch all and test everything … prepare for questions :)
Arizona Mildman:
January 2nd, 2012 at 11:58 pm
This guy spends more time screaming about how wonderful this software is, literally (he’s too loud). Can you please tell me how it works? It took 6 minutes for him to quit complaining about Notepad that works just fine for me. Why is C++ programming relevant? This is stupid.
VIM Series – Part 1 of 2 | devandseo:
January 15th, 2012 at 6:15 pm
[...] 1. If you prefer screencasts check out Derek’s great tutorials. [...]
Lei:
January 18th, 2012 at 12:15 pm
Derek, your VIM videos are very helpful and I love your energy. Hope you’ll put up more in the future. Oh and ignore the haters.
John:
January 22nd, 2012 at 7:16 am
I have say thank you!
I have to say good bye mouse&arrows!
Great man, thank you to bring me in to vim.
Thanks!
Dionysis:
January 25th, 2012 at 1:36 pm
Hey!
First of all thanks for the brilliant videos :)
Just a quick question in response to the Basic Editing 2 and visual mode:
I am using ctrl-c instead of Esc with the ctrl key assigned to the caps lock.
All is fine except when I use visual block mode and capital I to replace the text
in a column all at once. AFter I write the text and hit ctrl-c the other lines
are not replaced. The strange thing is that it works fine if I use Esc..
Any ideas?
Derek Wyatt:
January 25th, 2012 at 2:22 pm
Why are you using ctrl-c? Ctrl-c and esc aren’t the same thing. Seeing different behaviour is expected. Don’t use ctrl-c and you’ll be fine (as you already have seen :D)
and finally that moment of understanding. « recalibrations:
February 19th, 2012 at 3:43 pm
[...] Speaking of Vim, this is a pretty good set of intro videos by Derek Wyatt. [...]
Why I use VIM | Patrick Koperwas:
February 26th, 2012 at 12:34 am
[...] here is a series of videos that really got me into vi/vim. Watch them here They are worth the watch and will hopefully blow your mind as much as they blew [...]
Vídeotutoriales sobre Vim | CyberHades:
February 27th, 2012 at 7:44 am
[...] tutoriales sobre Vim creados por el autor de dicho blog. Están divididos en cuatro categorías: principiante, medio y avanzado. También tiene otra serie en la que nos muestra el uso de algunos [...]
Sean:
March 6th, 2012 at 2:24 am
Hey,
Thank you for vim tutorials.
One question about window and buffer.
I want to open all buffers each by window, and only one window opened currently, how to do that quickly?
Thanks.
Sean:
March 6th, 2012 at 2:40 am
I think the way to undo “c^w o” might be “ball”.
Derek Wyatt:
March 6th, 2012 at 3:15 am
Well, that’s different. If you want to load all buffers into separate windows then
:balldoes that. If you want to “undo” a “CTRL-w o” then lookup the ZoomWin plugin. It will restore your window layout.Sean:
March 7th, 2012 at 3:18 am
Hello Derek,
Today, I do a research about Selecting a function.
[vim.wikia.com/wiki/Format_a_code_block#Selecting_a_function]
it’s V/{%
But I dont like it,then I made another one and write it to my vimrc:
nmap vaf ][%V][
Does this one make sense?XDDD
Sean:
March 7th, 2012 at 5:39 am
nmap vaf [{?functionvf{]}
Sean:
March 7th, 2012 at 5:40 am
vaf [{?function<CR>vf{]}
colin:
March 15th, 2012 at 1:06 am
dude thanks a lot for the tuts! I’ve been using textmate but as you said there’s a point were you just get stuck and no new things to learn haha, hope I can become a Vim ninja!!! Thanks a lot!!!
konduru:
March 15th, 2012 at 5:33 am
echo $VIMRUNTIME does not work for me and i dont have vim directory. i just have vimrc file.i created vim directory and moved the vimrc file to it.but it doesnt seem to take that vimrc
Derek Wyatt:
March 15th, 2012 at 5:38 am
I don’t know what to say here :) It reads like you either haven’t installed Vim or you’re trying to echo $VIMRUNTIME from the shell prompt (and not in Vim), or you’re using Emacs or something… At any rate, you’re probably going to be better off heading to the main Vim page (http://www.vim.org) and following the instructions there, or heading to the mailing list. Blog comment structure isn’t great for this sort of thing.
Anand:
March 31st, 2012 at 11:10 am
Great collection of videos. Always wanted to take a more serious look at vim. Thanks.
Aang:
April 5th, 2012 at 8:30 pm
Sir Wyatt,
Thank you so much for these tutorials! I have just started using Vim, and these videos are just what I need. Content not overwhelming, but just enough to practice before moving on to the next one. Again, thanks :)
Justin Mayhew:
May 5th, 2012 at 12:24 pm
Just wanted to say thanks for the awesome videos.
Ilea Cristian:
May 31st, 2012 at 3:55 pm
In the very first tutorial about basic movement you talk about a command:
ctc – change ’till ‘c’ character. I see that you get a dollar sign to mark the end of the region you can change. My vim doesn’t do that. It deletes the region I want to change, and it stays in insert mode. Do you have some plugin or something like that?
Derek Wyatt:
May 31st, 2012 at 4:00 pm
This is standard vim stuff. See
Lupin:
May 31st, 2012 at 4:38 pm
Look, I really like your tutorials, these are the first tutorials that made me reconsider learning Vim and I appreciate you for this. But I have the same question, I can’t say it’s a problem, as the guy above with this ctc – change till ‘c’ character as the guy above. And I didn’t understand you’re answer. Can you reformulate please?
What do you mean it’s standard stuff? See what?
Thanks in advanced and happy Vim’ing :)
Derek Wyatt:
May 31st, 2012 at 5:11 pm
I don’t know what else to tell you :) The configuration that I put up on github (the link above) is the exact configuration you need to set to get the feature. You can always type “:help cpoptions” to get more information if you like, but if you just set that line in your configuration and then restart vim, you’ll get it.
Ilea Cristian:
June 1st, 2012 at 2:50 am
You talk about how to set that dollar sign in “Basic Editing Screencast 1)”. I only saw that video today. Sorry for the redundant question:P
Super videos, btw! I saw a screencast about vim from peepcode, but their tutorial is just not as good as yours! Thanks!
Natalia:
June 26th, 2012 at 4:31 am
Derek.. you are crazy! .. but I’m loving it :)
Vim «:
July 19th, 2012 at 6:00 am
[...] Vim novice tutorial videos [...]
Brad:
July 29th, 2012 at 3:26 am
Kudos on the very fine vim tutorial video series. Glad you toned down your ‘tude after the intro video (that was a bit much to take, and long-winded to boot), but the others I’ve viewed have been very well-done and instructive as well as entertaining. The little text summaries for each is a very good idea; I’d just say that you mention additional key strokes in passing in the videos that you don’t include/explain in the summaries and it would be helpful to have them in writing as well.
I’m an old phart, so I don’t know about all this fancy favoriting stuff, but I am keeping a copy of this link at the ready. I’m sure there are others doing the same, so your blog/video series is likely more successful than your web metrics are telling you.
FTR, came across your site searching for .vimrc example files. Speaking of which, it would be helpful to know why you are so bullish on “set noncompatible” — and for that matter, what that actually means in practice.
Derek Wyatt:
July 30th, 2012 at 3:33 am
An easy way to figure out what “nocompatible” means is to type “:help ‘nocompatible’”. You need to set it because it ensures that Vim is no longer compatible with Vi. If you set ‘compatible’ then Vim will be no more powerful than Vi, and you can’t use an Vim features.
okobaka:
August 8th, 2012 at 11:50 pm
These sheets are nice http://www.viemu.com/a_vi_vim_graphical_cheat_sheet_tutorial.html
Aaron Wright:
September 15th, 2012 at 7:41 am
Hey Derek,
I just wanted to say thanks for making these awesome tutorials. I’ve watched a few and have already learned so much. I kept putting off learning Vim so I could focus on learning programming itself. I’ve got that under my belt and am finally ready to learn Vim. Your tutorials rock!
Aaron
Derek Wyatt:
September 15th, 2012 at 7:47 am
I’m really glad they’re helpful, especially since I don’t have to do squat any more. I’m impressed that you’ve got programming under your belt! I’ve been doing it for over 20 years, and it pops up above my belt all the time :) (snicker :D)
Robert:
September 16th, 2012 at 11:28 am
Very Helpfull!!, I really like your videos, I have used vim for about eight years and I continue learning, I used to program c++ with vim, now I am working with Java, I used to hate java, unfortunately I work with it, I started using eclim plugin for eclipse, and I am really happy with it, I have tested anothers pluings for eclipse and nothing compares to pure vim, you can have all the vim power programming in Java with this plugin, I really love Vim. I agree with you, emacs is really powerful I used it some years ago but I stoped using it because brakets “(()()())” of LISP are really confusing to me, then VIM script is really easy to understand it’s similar to ruby, this is how I found Vim. Thanks for your videos.
deadalnix:
September 21st, 2012 at 5:25 am
I’m using vim more and more and try to improve at it. Your tutorial has been a great source to set some basics in place.
I look forward to see advanced ones. Thank you very much for the work you’ve done !
Greg:
October 4th, 2012 at 1:16 am
Taking an advanced c++ programming class, and I’ve always programmed in Visual studio, but in class my teacher uses Vim to do coding examples for the class and suggested we try it too. figured, hey why not, and opened it up.
Turns out i couldn’t figure out how to do anything so my productivity was essentially 0. Your tutorials have helped a lot and I’m getting close to being as efficient as i was with Studio. Its nice that i don’t have to move my hands constantly from coding on my keyboard to my mouse and to my keyboard and to my mouse. Very very useful, thank you very much for posting these videos.
docker:
October 9th, 2012 at 5:20 am
You are a real prophet Derek!
mike:
October 15th, 2012 at 7:01 am
Thanks for those tutorials. I’ve been using vim for a few years now, but it was lame – I used it like a enhanced windows notepad with fancy coloring syntax, tabs and regexes – im mode plus some standard keybindings like Ctrl-S for save etc. Now I can finally use it like I should have from beginning.
ravi:
November 21st, 2012 at 10:16 am
Derek,
Your video is awesome. I like you sense of humor and ability to captivate the viewer’s attention. Great job
Pradeep:
November 23rd, 2012 at 10:13 am
Derek,
Your videos are awesome!!! Great job “done” as you put it on your videos. Once again thanks very much.you have got a great sense of humor too.
Regards
Pradeep
Links of the Day (Vim Edition) – 11/27/2012 | Buzu’s Oficial Blog:
November 28th, 2012 at 1:10 am
[...] https://github.com/bpowell/vim-android http://blog.sanctum.geek.nz/vim-misconceptions/ http://www.derekwyatt.org/vim/vim-tutorial-videos/vim-novice-tutorial-videos/# http://robots.thoughtbot.com/post/27041742805/vim-you-complete-me [...]
Welcome to Vim | Jason John Wells:
December 7th, 2012 at 8:10 am
[...] I am wondering if Vim is a transferable skill set I should invest in and am thankful for Derek Watt’s screencast series. [...]
Plux:
December 14th, 2012 at 3:54 pm
Derek, thank you for the work that you have done. Your manner of presentation is cool and clear. I watch the videos on a single breath :)
Switching to VIM for Ruby on Rails Development:
December 14th, 2012 at 4:32 pm
[...] that I can use Vim for my primary editor.So here is what I followed to learn Vim for ruby on rails:Derekwyatt have an awesome beginners videos for vim. Check it out. Very first step for vim. (Free [...]
Robert:
January 17th, 2013 at 10:47 pm
Man,
Around 21+ minutes into the “Welcome to Vim” video, you almost amazed me with the xptemplate snippets engine showoff.
But it will never convince me.
I’m not afraid of character based stuff, screens, editors, command line.
But I have a dark secret. :)
I resent character based with a vengeance. It makes my stomach turn. Gives me claustrophobia. Nightmares. I’m glad that I left it behind me. The economic downturn has its ups. Game coding is my trade for the past 3 years.
Character based reminds me of the following :
I’ve been working on IBM Midrange (AS/400, iSeries, System i, etc) since 1988. It won’t get anymore character based than that.
But it’s a world of old retarded men and companies who didn’t want anything else than code in RPG/400.
First IBM bone IBM threw at them was RPG IV (the half-hearted object-oriented version of RPG), to lure them out of Jurassic Park. But companies and coders both refused to adopt it for years.
Java was introduced in the same year that RPG IV was introduced. But who knows RPG IV?
Next, IBM threw the Java bone at them, to be the new default programming language on IBM Midrange. You guessed it right. Total ignorance : “All that fancy stuff will make our box unstable and slow. We can program anything in RPG/400. We don’t need anything else. What can you build in Java, that you can’t built in RPG?”
They were right. Sort of. You can build the same in both. Only it takes 500 years in RPG/400, and like a week in Java.
We could have had nice independent (non-IBM) editors and IDEs to develop Midrange code. Character based, or not. I realize, IBM Rational IDEs exist (Eclipse based). Rational products understand IBM Midrange’s IFS file system (for file, and source code retrieval/storage), but they also require IBM compilers, which are only installed and executable on IBM hardware. So there is no way to educate yourself by buying an IBM Rational IDE, or using Vim, you would also need to buy an IBM Midrange computer or buy a timeshare on one.
Grren screens, character based editor, unwilling old (between their ears) farts, unwilling companies, and bad marketing and arm twisting priorities from IBM.
I’m not going back.
Brian:
February 15th, 2013 at 10:00 am
Great vids.. watched two today and can’t wait to see the others (but can only learn a little at a time). Thanks for making them available! Beats the heck out of ‘vimtutor’, lol :)
Derek Wyatt:
February 15th, 2013 at 10:03 am
I’m pretty darn sure you’ve missed the point.
Response to Andrew Ray’s blog post: | Dat ST Bullshit I have to deal with.:
March 27th, 2013 at 7:59 am
[...] of http://www.derekwyatt.org/vim/vim-tutorial-videos/vim-novice-tutorial-videos/ [...]
Key Mapping and Vintage Mode Setup for Sublime Text 2:
April 25th, 2013 at 2:41 pm
[...] the way you code; I’ll let Derek Wyatt do that. Watch his incredible video blog series Vim Novice. If his excitement and fanaticism doesn’t convince you to make the switch, just leave now, [...]
santosh:
April 27th, 2013 at 10:27 am
Your videos are simply Awwwwwwesome. !!!
My love towards Vim has exponentially increased.
Thank you so much. Keep up the good work.
Nat:
May 11th, 2013 at 12:29 pm
Hoi Derek!
The lessons are awesome!! Thanks a bunch! I’ve spent few hours watching the video and playing with vim. I’m used to work in netbeans though, but man, it drives me crazy how much memory this IDE takes, therefore I glanced at vim. And must admit I’m of changing the IDE)) Thanks again!