Re: OT: The so called "steep learning curve" of vim...

On 10/01/12 14:17, Boyko Bantchev wrote:
> In my personal opinion, saying that "Vim's learning curve is steep"
> is nothing but a gross exaggeration. Why should it be? Are Vim's
> potential users computer illiterates, incapable of adapting to simple
> albeit new concepts?

I'm pretty sure it stems on how productive one can be when
confronted with the editor without any previous experience.

A newbie user can approach Nano and see the "these are the things
you can do" at the bottom, as well as how to obtain help; or Notepad
and see that it offers the standard File/Edit/Help menu options to
click on. In both, typing does exactly what is expected: it enters
text.

In Vim, yes, the opening screen of a new editing session does point
to how to obtain help. But (1) if you invoke it on a filename (or
have $EDITOR or $VISUAL unset and another application uses vi(m) as
the default), you don't see the "here's how you get help", and (2)
while arrow keys in most cases, typing as one is accustomed to doing
in other text-editing programs (whether Notepad, Word, an email
client, or even just a text-entry box in a browser) doesn't have the
expected behavior.

So the "curve is steep" indicates that you have to read *some*
instructions before you can likely even do _anything_. Yes, vim
offers good tutorials like vimtutor and there are plenty of other
good tutorials and cheat-sheets a mere google away, but it does
require _some_ up-front learning.

-tim


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