An introductory workshop on Vim

1. DSC Workshop Series:
git gud @ vim 🙇

2. In this workshop series we will be starting from the
basics and working our way towards the path of
vim excellence.
Excellence? It’s not a competition, its about
getting good and having fun along the way too
Beau Williams
DSC Macquarie University
github.com/beauwilliams
Let’s beat that learning curve!

3. Look no further! It’s more than just an editor, it’s a
way of life, just kidding.. but seriously vim is a pretty
awesome tool to have at your disposal. It might not
make you a better programmer, but it might help you
do it faster.
Ever wondered if there is a more enjoyable way to
manipulate text?
Vim is the descendant
of stevie, which was a
port of Bill Joy’s vi

4. Vim is a modal text editor. It’s not
intuitive, but given time its an
indispensable feature to have.
Tell me more..?
Typically you are just typing, you
might have some special
commands such as copy/paste. But
what if we need a more extensible
set of commands 🤔
An age old problem

5. The editor wars
After many fierce and bloody battles…
..few victors have managed to stake a claim in the modern editor space. Of
those an old foe still stands, they may now be known as vim, and they are our
friend. Together we hold hands while we rip through text at blazing speed.
Stunning our opponents with our swift keystrokes. We play the keyboard like
Art Tatum on a brisk Sunday evening. Nobody saw us coming.. We have up
our sleeves a simple trick that keeps our rhythm steady. Name mnemonics.

6. Mnemonics are memory devices. They allow us to
remember facts, locations just about anything! For
the purpose of vim, we will take advantage of the
letters on our keyboards to construct sequences that
perform a variety of actions on our code. For
example, while we are in normal mode we can use,
cw à “change word” to delete a word and begin
typing a new one in its place.
Mnemonics?!
We can utilise mnemonic
tricks to help us
remember facts such as
the colours of a rainbow

7. The purpose of vi was to make if easier to edit files over
a 300 baud connection, where every keystroke counts
The legacy of vi, how
vim was born

8. Source code written by Bill Joy in 1976
The original vi was written on a Lear-Siegler ADM-3A

9. It runs in your
terminal
But that’s only half correct
Vim, by extension of modal editing
and name mnemonics is available
basically anywhere.. Well sort of.
Don’t be afraid, you’ll figure out the
basics very soon 😊

10. Dotfiles?
Typically, we append a ”.” in front
of files used to store configuration
There is so many ways to
configure vim. You can create a
vim configuration file “.vimrc” by
opening your terminal and typing..

11. You can make it yours, given time vim can be
insanely productive – but its not a complete
replacement for an IDE
Vim can be customised to
suit your needs precisely..

12. Let’s get to work!
1) The fun introduction to vim
Vim Adventures Game
1) The spicy introduction to vim
The Primeagen: Basic Vim Movements
1) The official introduction to vim (terminal command)
$> vimtutor

13. Thank You!
Beau Williams
DSC Macquarie University
github.com/beauwilliams
Check out my dotfiles for some more vimspirations 😀