[johncoltrane]

The problem wasn't the "extreme & foreign environment", the problem was that you thought wrongly that you could learn Vim as if it were a regular editor.

Learning Vim is a side project: something you do casually, slowly, until and if you are able to do the actual switch.

Those braindead distributions are just smoke mirrors for lazy and pressed people: they provide training wheels but they actively prevent you from actually learning core Vim. They make people $distribution_name users instead of Vim users.

[Legion]

> Learning Vim is a side project: something you do casually, slowly, until and if you are able to do the actual switch.

No one appointed you the director of how one learns Vim.

This is one of the most obnoxious parts of Vim threads: that guy that responds to people talking about how they learned Vim (past tense, as in already happened) and tells them that they learned it "wrong".

[eksith]

I second this. I've really underestimated how big an impact first impressions can leave, especially when dealing with completely unfamiliar tools.

My first intro to Vim could be called "haphazard" at best because I was pressed at the time, and so that thoroughly soured the relationship. It was only after I took a few steps back and went at it with a let's try this again attitude very slowly did I finally get through it without exhausting myself. I wish I took the slow route the first time.

Best way to learn Vim is to learn it for the sake of learning it. Not because "it's in the way".

[commandar]

>Learning Vim is a side project: something you do casually, slowly, until and if you are able to do the actual switch.

For me, vim didn't take until I used it start to finish on a smaller, week-long project and immersed myself in it. Everyone learns differently.

[jvoorhis]

In the long run, the distros are also a dead end. Neither Square, nor "Carlhuda" share the same commitment as Brian Moolenaar. If you find them useful then take advantage, knowing that they are only a fixed point within the ecosystem.