Mastering the Vim Language

Chris Toomey talks about mastering the Vim language. Vim's core is the amazing command mappings and text objects that allow for countless combinations to define precise edits. Learn how to master the built-in commands, motions, and text objects, and even how to extend the Vim language for even more power!

Learn more from the developers at thoughtbot ⌨️

[aprameyanaganur]

The thing thats special about vim as a text editor is that people who use it hold entire meetups about it

[joshuarose]

Even 8 years later, people are still finding great value in these videos. Cheers, Chris.

[abhishes]

He matched his shirt with the VIM logo :)

[baovu]

4:35 the language (basics)
5:36 repeatable & undoable
6:48 verbs/operators in vim
8:21 nouns in vim - motions
9:05 nouns in vim - text objects
12:18 nouns in vim - parameterized text objects (find/search)
16:33 where to learn/read
18:35 tips for mastering the language
20:35 relative number
22:45 visual mode is a smell
24:18 custom operators (from plugins)
24:42 tpope/vim-surround
26:02 tpope/vim-commentary
26:48
27:41 christoomey/vim-titlecase
28:21 christoomey/sort-motion
28:57 christommey/system-copy
29:52 custom nouns (objects)
30:03
31:08 kana/vim-textobj-entire
30:30 kana/vim-textobj-line
both requires kana/vim-textobj-user
32:15 ruby block
33:30 Finding more custom text objects

[victormartins-software]

This talk was a huge break through for me: "Vim is a language where operators act on text objects." BOOOM thank you :D

[hbirtt]

5 years later, and this is still great stuff, it's all still accurate and current, and I still learned something I didn't know. That's Vim, isn't it?

[TonMachielsen]

I've been looking for a long time why I would have to learn vim and why people are so enthusiastic about it. This is the first video that explains exactly that instead of trying to convince me to use an archaic editor on my graphical OS. Very good video. Very clear. This makes learning vim a lot easier as well now that I understand this.

[antoniodosreisfeitosaneto]

Vim is a great tool since .. ever. I woul add the 'z' core commands to the list of things I miss in every other editor I use. z<enter> puts the current line on the top of the screen. z- puts the current line as the last one of the screen. And z. scrolls the text so that the current line go the cneter of the screen. So useful for positioning text on the screen

[richard]

I just woke up from a nap, left youtube on and now im learning a strange language.

[MmmBopsPops]

Been using vim for well over 7 years now and still learned a lot from this. Like he said - never reach the ceiling.

[Scrumpylungs]

24:20 "Now we get into the fun stuff" he says, 20+ mins into an incredibly fun talk! Already know by this point that I'm switching to vim full time 💯

[cMaXeJIJIo]

I actually lost count how many times I've watched this presentation! It's what got me into VIM, big time. So, thank you, Chris Toomey! You do some good work, too, haha!

I have a little update on Tim Pope's Commentary plugin. It now uses a different syntax than when this video was made:

g + c + l = comment out a line;
g + c + j = comment one line down;
gcgc = uncomment(Uncomments a whole block of text if it was commented out in one motion, a paragraph, for example)

Many thanks for providing the presentation video, guys!

[zapy]

I also learned new youtube shortcuts trying to apply the commands here

[normalmighty]

This is so good as a tutorial! I had given up because no matter how many people swore by vim, I could never remember a single command. I think this if finally giving me the intro I need to understand the logic of these commands and get somewhere without staring at a cheat sheet!

[Baalzemor]

Not sure if you have found this out by now or not, but I seen you delete a character, then type its lowercase for an example.
If you hover the character, and hit ~ it will invert the case. It's pretty useful in my opinion!

[bingbong]

I've officially switched to (neo)vim this past week. My previous IDE of choice was IntelliJ IDEA so it was a huge jump and took me awhile to let go, but I finally did it and I'm so happy about it!

[abhinavgujjar]

This talk really gets into the soul of vim. Thinking about repeatabilty made a lot of sense.

[user]

You can find a second or nth instance of o with `2fo` or `<n>fo`.

[KensterInSilico]

Biggest takeaways were working with text objects and making commands repeatable. Great video. Thanks!

[mmlvx]

At 23:53 -- "Relative number's got you covered, absolutely" -- that made me laugh a lot. 😀