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Beginner Guide to the VIM (VI-Improved) Editor
I remember the very first time I encountered Vim. I was a university student, and the computers in the computer science department’s lab were installed with Ubuntu Linux. While I had been exposed to different Linux variations (like RHEL) even before my college years (Red Hat sold its CDs at Best Buy!), this was the first time I needed to use the Linux operating system regularly, because my classes required me to do so. Once I started using Linux, like many others before and after me, I began to feel like a “real programmer.”
Students could use a graphical text editor like Kate, which was installed on the lab computers by default. For students who could use the shell but weren’t used to the console-based editor, the popular choice was Nano, which provided good interactive menus and an experience similar to Windows’ graphical text editor.
I used Nano sometimes, but I heard awesome things about Vi/Vim and Emacs and really wanted to give them a try (mainly because they looked cool, and I was also curious to see what was so great about them). Using Vim for the first time scared me — I did not want to mess anything up! But once I got the hang of it, things became much easier and I could appreciate the editor’s powerful capabilities. As for Emacs, well, I sort of gave up, but I’m happy I stuck with Vim.
