[wayne]

I have computer-literate parents and grew up in the PC era, so as a child I typed my elementary school assignments in vi. Accidentally using :X, encrypting one of my school papers, and having to completely rewrite it, was one of the slightly-traumatizing moments in my childhood.

FWIW, I switched to :wq for a while but I'm back to using :x instead of :wq. I'm just very careful now. :)

[chasd00]

I did this same thing on a large programming assignment in college. I’m 46 and can still remember the way the lab smelled and what the people sitting next to me were wearing the moment it happened.

[mattkrause]

If your TA was named Matt and a bit skeptical/sarcastic about this, I am once again very sorry!

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34290590

[lucb1e]

I get annoyed by ":W is not a valid command" errors and aliased it, and that's not even dangerous to get wrong, just have to retype ":w". Why be so careful instead of just aliasing it?

vimrc excerpt:

    command Wq wq
    command WQ wq
    command W w
    command Q q
    command Bd bd
    cnoreabbrev q1 q!

I hate having to get the shift key timing correct so much that I also aliased : to ; for commands, but that's more radical and gets me into trouble on remote systems that are not my own, not sure if I recommend it. I'd recommend vim to change the default for everyone, though (fat chance, I know).

Another annoying thing in vim is whatever the heck Q does. Try to type :q, fail, retry, and now suddenly you have an extra window to close or something. Solution: nnoremap Q <nop>

[hcs]

I used to use the W alias whenever I noticed myself doing it on a new setup, but I haven't had to do it recently. I suspect my "slow on the shift" issue was due in part to the lousy keyboards I used to use.