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vi is documented

Problem is most people start it the first time by providing a text file instead of firing it on its own and be greeted by the tutorial. I guess that is because they are blindly following another tutorial instead of trying to understand what they are doing.

My opinion is that "self documentation", "Getting started" pages and "tutorials" is a disease. People would actually get up to speed quicker by reading real manuals instead. They are just lured into thinking they will learn faster with tutorials because they get their first concrete results quicker but at this stage the harsh reality is thay they still usually don't know anything.

First time I used vi, I just had my operating system manual on my desk and I quickly learned to open man pages in a separate tty.



VI or VIM? VI has no welcome screen. It drops you straight into a blank screen of '~' from where you just have to know to enter the insert mode, which is also not indicated anywhere unlike in VIM.


There was a time when manuals was kinda big physical books. I think I have a word perfect one that is the size of a textbook. It was not about getting a result (any result) in 5 seconds. It was more about having a goal and browsing through relevant sections to learn how to do it.




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