Question

I’ve learned the basic/intermediate levels of VIM (it’s too vast to list). I often find that I slip back to my old ways and start using the mouse, holding down keys to get somewhere, and doing other stupid things that could be sped up.

Would it be worth spending time to learn ed to break the habits learned from years in a point and click interface? Does using ed cultivate the right type of thinking that will transfer to VIM?

Answer 1

You need a change in habits which is much deeper than simply dropping the mouse. You need to understand that if you really want to learn Vim you have to do it “the hard way”: read and memorize text-objects (:help text-objects) operations and movements and try using arrows/hjkl as little as possible.

At first you will be a lot slower, but don’t fall back to normal movement. If you need to select a paragraph, use vap, if you need to change the text inside a pair of double quotes use ci" and so on. When these things will come out of your fingers naturally, you’ll realize how worth it was the time spent to get used to them.