Recently I stumbled upon this intriguing tweet:
Some background – Vim is a powerful text editor that is mostly used from a command prompt/terminal by programmers or other IT professionals. It is notorious for it’s steep learning curve because its simplest operations (like moving the cursor or even exiting the program) are not immediately obvious.
After reading the article that was linked to in the tweet, I was motivated to try to learn vim even though I had originally been intimidated by the learning curve. The article suggested a specific tutorial (vivmtutor), explained about how long it would take to complete (30 min), and promised that it would break all of the major barriers to entry.
This experience got me thinking about other learning obstacles that we can come across every day. How many tools or topics have you aspired to learn, yet give up after 5 minutes? Whether it is Linear Algebra, Underwater Basket Weaving, or Art History, everything has a barrier to entry. Don’t let that get in your way, set your expectations properly and find a tutorial or crash course to help you through!
I ended up doing the tutorial and as promised, I now know how to exit vim (and a few other tricks).
Silicon Spatula 