diff --git a/content/reviews/books/pro-vim.md b/content/reviews/books/pro-vim.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..fbc6322 --- /dev/null +++ b/content/reviews/books/pro-vim.md @@ -0,0 +1,73 @@ ++++ +title = "Pro Vim - Mark McDonnell" +date = 2019-09-04 + +[taxonomies] +tags = ["en-au", "books", "reviews", "vim", "mark mcdonnell"] ++++ + +[GoodReads link](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23717582-pro-vim): (No +summary exists). + + + +{{ stars(stars=2) }} + +First, the disclaimers: I'm a VIM user since early 2000; I wrote a "Using VIM" +book-of-sorts (in Portuguese); this book is, at the time of this review, 5 +years old. + +The book intro said it was called "Pro" 'cause there was no middle ground for +VIM: when you start learning VIM, you have to go all the way to pro. + +So, is it a book aimed for beginners? Maybe. VIM has a very steep learning +curve, but things can be smoothed out by explaining things in steps; because +VIM uses composable commands, you can explain movement -- say, "w" moves the +cursor to "next Word", "e" moves the cursor to the end of the word and so on +-- and then explain that you can modify the text using a verb and a movement +-- "d" is delete and "dw" means "delete word". But the book decides to jump +around and, while explaining movement, jumps into the modification verbs +without explaining verbs before: There you are, leisurely reading about moving +the cursor around and suddenly a "c2w" appears, with no explanation of what +the "c" or "2" does. It works, but I have the feeling that it more confusing +to dump things straight away than explaining step by step and how things +connect. + +Is it a book aimed for people who already know VIM? Maybe not. Surely there +are a few things one can still learn about VIM years after using it, but after +20 years, I guess I read everything VIM can do at this point. But, again, +maybe you don't have 20 years of VIM and there are things you still don't +know. + +Does it show ways to make you more productive in VIM? I'm not sure. I mean, +the whole book is based on the author's workflow -- a workflow that is only +slightly exposed -- and if you don't have the same workflow... Maybe it won't +fit at all on yours, 'cause it focus on the workflow and not on how certain +movements/commands can improve yours. + +Is this book up-to-date? In the VIM commands part, yes. In the plug-ins... not +so much. VIM got a bunch of new releases recently (say, last year) and, thus, +a lot has changed in the plug-in area. Surely Fugitive (which the author +decided it should be called "fugative", for some reason) is still the most +feature-complete Git plugin, but everything else was already replaced (and +yes, that book-of-sorts I wrote also suffers from this problem). + +Why Tmux is there? Well, VIM mixes well with Tmux, but I have to ask +why it is there. Why there isn't a section for rxvt, for example? Or +Gnome-Terminal? Doesn't VIM mixes well with those too? (My guess is, again, +that the book focus a lot on the author's workflow and not how things in the +workflow improved things, so because the author feels Tmux improved his +workflow, we must talk about Tmux). There is also the problem that the author +recommends using his configuration, so a lot of keybinds are not the default +ones, and one starting from scratch may not understand why things aren't +working. + +Again, the book didn't age well. Plugins are out of date, there should be a +serious editorial work on it -- one chapter has paragraphs with garbled +content, which is completely unintelligible -- there is no "Style Conventions" +for things, so keystrokes will appear in one style in one chapter and in a +different style in the next. And some things are shown in one chapter and only +explained in the next, which makes me think the order was changed after the +chapters were written. + +In general, it may be OK if you are starting with VIM, but that's that.