The Why? Page

Why Bother? (reasons)

There are many other editors, some being quite excellent. There is no reason why you cannot use one of them, however, there are some advantages in using Vim. Likewise none of these reasons are unique to Vim.

• With the sudden rise in Unix use (Linux and Mac OS X, in particular) the text editor known as Vim ("vi improved") has become ubiquitous
• Vim has a small footprint in RAM and on the CPU. A given system can support a great many Vim users at once.
• Vim has a lot of "superpowers", which make editing quite efficient.
• Vim has "geek appeal".
• Vim has a very active user/developer community. It always has.

Why Write This Tutorial (approach)

There are other tutorials that are very good, and google will help you find them all. Maybe the greatest need in this world is not for another vim tutorial, but this one is mine.
I have taken a slighltly different approach. I think that there is a certain mental model that makes mastering Vim much easier. Also, I include habits that make Vim your friend. I don't know who else does this.

I've agonized and organized (and reorganized, and reorganized) the tutorial for top-to-bottom learning, with the goal that anyone who manages to emerge at the other end of this tutorial will have professional-grade editing skills, probably better than many of their experienced colleagues.
While I advise patience and deep memory, I think this is one of the fastest ways to improve your use of vim, and a pretty good way to start using vim from scratch. I wrote this for the moderately impatient developer.

I decided not to try to write a for-sale book, because anyone should be able to use vim like a pro, any time and place they choose, and without paying me any kind of "vim toll".

How should one use the tutorial? (usage)

Look at each numbered item in this page as a separate lesson, and spend a little time with it before moving onward. Maybe spend a day with each bit of knowledge, and maybe a several days when the lesson is particularly meaty.
Consider doing a few lessons a week. Don't be in a hurry. Don't rush your brain so that each time you learn something new, you lose something old. The tutorial will last as long as you need it. You have permission to breathe.
You can't learn vim without using vim, so you should have some text files (preferably open source program code) to work with. It is better yet if you are using vim at work. It also helps if you work with a partner who is also reading this tutorial, so that you can reinforce each other.

What can I do with this tutorial? (license)

 
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.Copy it, share it, paste it into your web page. Don't pretend it is your own stuff, and please give me some attribution. As a courtesy, if you find it worth distributing, I wouldn't mind getting a copy or a link. Just let me know.