Expectations in how to get faster with Vim/Nvim?

Question

I have been using VIM for around 7 months now for all writing and all coding. Maybe 1-2 hours per day.

I can use it and work quite fast with it. Most of the time I know what I am doing.

But I still find myself looking at the keyboard sometimes to do basic things... like going down one line and left 5 times.

Are my expectations wrong or am I making slow progress?

Answer 1

I think for me the key was (and the optimization-happy engineer in me is aghast at this) not trying to vim-golf my motions. Because once you have to think about the motion it takes you out of the flow.

Find key combos that work for you. Then, when you're ready to focus on improving efficiency, pick one thing you want to improve on and try to consciously get better at it. In your case, instead of trying to jump vertically/horizontally optimally, maybe just go ahead and (sounds like you're on a macbook where this is easier) just arrow over for now (I know I know please don't lynch me). Get comfortable where it's automatic.

Then start optimizing. For me atm it's using yi({[ and ci({[ instead of t and f when trying to grab or change expressions.

Because once it is automatic, it will probably feel so friggin slow. I find pairing with other devs (especially non-vimmers) helps put me in the right mindset: I cringe because I can literally feel when their hands leave the keyboard to reach for the mouse and when the cursor is moving one character at a time it feels like I could re-write War and Peace before they get where they're going.

If using hjkl to move is what you're currently trying to improve on, just practice more.

Answer 2

What helped me was to vocalize the commands I'm issuing in my head while keying them into Vim, e.g.:

• "change inside quotes" ⇒ ci"
• "goto definition" ⇒ gd
• "change surroundings parens to brackets" ⇒ cs([

The goal of that exercise is not only to memorize the commands but also to build a "vocabulary" for what you are doing. Over time this vocabulary will become internalized and you won't need it anymore. It shortens the distance between your intentions and your actions.

You don't have to do this all the time, but take some time every day to do it.

Answer 3

Jared Smith's answer is generally correct, but here I'll provide a few more hints on how to implement this.

The very first thing you need to do, above all else, is to make sure you can touch-type (i.e., with your eyes closed) the entire keyboard, including numbers and punctuation. For example, you already know that going down one line and left five times is j5h; you should not be looking at the keyboard for any of this. Many moves require the use of punctuation (e.g., paragraph forward/back }/{ and search forward/back for word under cursor */#), which is why you need to be able to touch-type this just as easily as you can hjkl.

Learning this, if you don't already know it, will require slowing down before you can regain and exceed your previous speed. Like learning a scale on a musical instrument, you need to learn it correctly before you can do it correctly at speed.

Once you've got down these sorts of basic moves, move on to using counted basic moves that get you roughly closer to where you want to go when you need to do the move more than three or four times. 8wbb is fewer keystrokes than hitting w six times, and you'll be faster getting near where you need to go and then doing a small number of moves than you will trying to calculate a large count in advance.

At that point it's time to start adding new commands. Explore the Vim documentation (:help), looking both at keystrokes you don't know to learn what's out there and at entire sections to see what's in the various command groups that can be helpful. As Jared says, pick something that seems the most useful and slow yourself down to start using it. Wait until you come back up to speed again with these new commands before trying to bring in more.

Once you've explored a fair number of Vim commands, you'll want to start examining what you're still inefficient on in your particular application and start adding mappings and functions to help you handle those. For example, I do a lot of markdown editing with references at the bottom of the file or section in which they're used; I've added gr to search for the reference under the cursor (e.g., text like "[foo bar]") so I can easily move to other references and the reference definition. After using this for a while I added gR to read the reference the cursor is one, jump to the reference definition, and copy the URL of the reference to the "+ buffer which lets me paste it directly into a browser, curl command line, or whatever.

Answer 4

The other answers here are already great and you should follow their advice first. But I'd like to add:

Periodically look for new useful commands

Periodically review vim cheat sheets looking for new commands that could be helpful to add to your repertoire. By using a cheat sheet you're not having to sift through everything in vim help so you're more likely to find useful things. Don't keep using the same cheat sheet because you might find something interesting on a different cheat sheet and it is good to get fresh perspectives. Google will help you find hundreds of different cheat sheets out there.

I left "periodically" vague above on purpose. It might work best for you every month in the early days of using vim and then every quarter and then every year as you've been at it longer. Spacing it out means you've had time to let the prior new commands sink in and become muscle memory and you will have run into new challenges that might have command sequences to make easier. Consider putting a reminder on your calendar.

Put up a poster

This poster used to be commonly found in University terminal rooms:

Staring at something like this everyday will remind you of commands that you might otherwise forget. Consider posting something like this in sight of your computer if you have room.