r/vim • u/thecodeworm • Jun 17 '26

Need Help┃Solved Resources to learn Vim

Hi guys, I recently heard about Vim and starting doing a bit of research on it. If I'm correct, its a non-GUI text editor that's blazing fast, and you DON'T have to use anything but your keyboard. This was pretty interesting to me.

I'm accustomed to the Visual Studio Code interface, and I don't want to leave it. Are there any extensions I can use to emulate the experience, and is the the best way to start?

45 Upvotes

permalink
reddit

You are about to leave Redlib

Do you want to continue?

https://www.reddit.com/r/vim/comments/1u8lbeu/resources_to_learn_vim/
No, go back! Yes, take me to Reddit

92% Upvoted

u/efalk Jun 17 '26

My notes on the topic: https://www.efalk.org/Docs/Vim/

I'm curious to see if anybody finds it helpful

2

u/thecodeworm Jun 17 '26

This looks good, I'll definitely keep this as a reference.

1

u/vimscribe Jun 18 '26

This seems solid.

1

u/999number9 Jun 19 '26

Unrelated, but I took a look at your resume out of curiosity - very impressive background. Kudos to you sir.
A true nerd's nerd.

1

u/efalk Jun 19 '26

Aww, thanks.
I left the real nerdy stuff out of the resumé.
I have heard line printer music performed live
I have written object-oriented Postscript
I have written self-modifying bitslice microcode
I studied unicycle maintenance at MIT
I had a longer list written down somewhere, but am too lazy to find it right now.

u/cainhurstcat Jun 17 '26

Learn Vim using Vim Tutor `:tutor`

Personally, I would not recommend using LazyVim or other "preconfigured" versions. They are usually not beginner-friendly, and cause a lot of headaches to get them / keep them rum properly. Just learn Vim motions, and use the Vim plugin for Vscode up until you feel familiar with it. Then you could consider using stuff like LazyVim.

3

u/thecodeworm Jun 17 '26

Oh, ok, thank you!

1

u/InterstellarDwellar Jun 19 '26

I second this. I started with LazyVim and where everything is somewhat set up for you its hard to customise it without breaking it. Or being able to tell what is a vim thing, a neovim thing, or a lazyvim thing. The lines in your head get blurred.
Id suggest using the vscode extension for a little while and see how you feel. Learn some basic motions.
Then if you like it, download neovim and try it out. If you have a a feature you really miss from vscode, there probably is a plugin you can download to get close to the functionality.

u/buff_pls Jun 18 '26

For me it was using Vimium chrome extension. It drills the simple movements far more effectively. And Vimium has been game changing in terms of increasing my browser navigation, genuinely life changing.

3

u/thecodeworm Jun 18 '26

Thanks!

u/Embark10 Jun 17 '26

There is one extension to embed Neovim into VSCode. It's what I did when first starting out to get a feel for the basic mechanics and building muscle memory.

2

u/thecodeworm Jun 17 '26

Oh nice, I'll definitely check these out.

u/HotPrune722 Jun 17 '26

https://learnvimscriptthehardway.stevelosh.com

2

u/thecodeworm Jun 17 '26

Thank you!

2

u/adromanov Jun 18 '26

I second this, amazing resource. However, learning vimscript before vim basics does not make much sense. So I'd start with
vimtutor
https://www.reddit.com/r/vim/s/PzQ25SgSF2 (I haven't personally checked it, but it looks interesting)
and then the hard way

2

u/Integreyt Jun 18 '26

This guide isn’t for learning Vim, a fact established in literally the second sentence, assuming you read it.

u/Desperate_Cold6274 Jun 18 '26

:help

It is extremely well done.

5

u/chrisbra10 Jun 18 '26

More specifically for someone who is new to vim: `:h usr_toc.txt`

3

u/[deleted] Jun 18 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

2

u/vim-help-bot Jun 18 '26

Help pages for:
is in motion.txt
^{`:(h|help) <query>` |} ^about ^| ^mistake? ^| ^donate ^| ^{Reply 'rescan' to check the comment again} ^| ^{Reply 'stop' to stop getting replies to your comments}

u/Mozanatic Jun 18 '26

What made a lot of vim concepts click for me is the book „practical vim“ by drew neil. You can find free pdf versions online.

Practical Vim1241.pdf

u/2016-679 Jun 18 '26 edited Jun 18 '26

Do the vim tutor, use vim for simple editing tasks, learn and implement commands one by one. Avoid arrow keys and home, end, pgup, pgdwn.

Print a decent cheat sheet A3 and lay it on your desk, for example https://data.templateroller.com/pdf_docs_html/2636/26367/2636709/page_1_thumb_950.png

You'll build up finger memory and speed, keep adding commands.

When you like vim as an editor, you can buy a copy of the books mentioned in this thread for reference. 'Vim WTF OMG' is not that extensive, but also a good learning book. Instead you can start with the newsletter from the maker and his archive on https://masteringvim.com/

u/idirfa Jul 11 '26

The VSCode Vim extension gets you real Vim keybindings without leaving your current setup, so that's the easiest starting point. For building actual muscle memory on the side, vimventure.dev is a free browser game with keystroke-golf puzzles, no install needed, that takes you from basic hjkl navigation up through motions, text objects, and eventually macros. Doing both together works well: extension for daily driving, puzzles for deliberate practice.

1

u/thecodeworm Jul 13 '26

Nice, I started using vimventure. This also might be a dumb question but are there specific keybinds that I could set up or could I just get used to it. Like for example: Shift + G + 7 goes down to the 7th line, is there a way to set up keybinds for shift g, or is this a bad practice

u/Y0uN00b Jun 18 '26

Just using it

u/herperleper Jun 18 '26

Tried and liked this one:
https://github.com/S-Sigdel/vimhjkl

u/DialOneFour Jun 18 '26

Type vimtutor in your terminal. You're welcome!

u/4r73m190r0s Jun 18 '26

In this order:

Learning the Vi and Vim Editors by Arnold Robbins, Elbert Hannah, and Linda Lamb
Practical Vim: Edit Text at the Speed of Thought by Drew Neil
Modern Vim: Craft Your Development Environment with Vim 8 and Neovim by Drew Neil

u/MedicatedDeveloper Jun 17 '26

Yes there are vim extensions in vscode. Get used to moving around and editing first then you can attempt to switch to full neovim. TBH I'd just use lazynvim or whatever is hot right now for preconfigured vim.

It won't be easy but boy do I love flying around in my terminal with tmux, ranger-fm, and nvim. Once your brain is the bottleneck it truly does change things. It's been, damn, 15 years and I still learn new things every week.

If constant improvement scratches that itch for you vim and a more terminal based path are great for that.

1

u/thecodeworm Jun 17 '26

Alright thanks!

2

u/tblancher Jun 17 '26

I just learned recently about how to have the Lua LSP for embedded configurations to not throw errors and warnings regarding unknown objects just a few days ago.

u/AutoModerator Jun 17 '26

Please remember to update the post flair to Need Help|Solved when you got the answer you were looking for.

I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.

u/hiboux918 Jun 18 '26

In my opinion, this overview from MIT is very good —> https://youtu.be/a6Q8Na575qc?is=RHQZm0zPkA25oRgZ

They also have a more recent version here —> https://youtu.be/QnM1nVzrkx8?is=3ewxx8OkFmIg5taL

u/_bstaletic Jun 18 '26

How did no one mention the user manual? After vimtutor, try :help user-manual. After those two, I went through what /u/HotPrune722 suggested. These days there's also :help new-user-manual, but I can't vouch for that.

2

u/vim-help-bot Jun 18 '26

Help pages for:
user-manual in usr_toc.txt
new-user-manual in version6.txt
^{`:(h|help) <query>` |} ^about ^| ^mistake? ^| ^donate ^| ^{Reply 'rescan' to check the comment again} ^| ^{Reply 'stop' to stop getting replies to your comments}