vim-be-good VS CotEditor

Sure! The first thing I did was follow this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w7i4amO_zaE

This is ThePrimeagen's 0 to LSP, Neovim RC from Scratch. In this video he performs a clean installation of Neovim and goes step by step adding the things he considers essential. This was very important for me to acquaint myself with how things work, how to install plugins, how to define custom key maps. I remember the first times I tried using Vim, I couldn't figure out how to get Nerdtree to work. This video made me realize I just lacked the knowledge of how Vim config works.

This video was such a good start because It provided me with the tools to continue my exploration of Vim autonomously. In a week I was already able to install new plugins and tweak them using Lua config files the way I specifically wanted. It's such a cool experience!

Keep in mind that both the author of this video and I use Neovim, which is a fork of Vim. As a text editor they both function essentially the same. The difference lies on the config files and in broader UI capabilities by Neovim. While Vim uses Vimscript, Neovim prefers Lua, although Neovim is fully backwards compatible, so you can choose to use Vimscript for your configuration if you want as well. This also means that Vim plugins just work with Neovim!

The docs are also a huge source of knowledge for me. In the beginning I resorted to :help key-codes a lot when defining key mappings.

To learn the Vim motions, which is the most challenging part of using Vim, I suggest you find a cheatsheet online and refer to it all the time. One very cool plugin that will help you get comfortable with Vim motions is ThePrimeagen's VimBeGod: https://github.com/ThePrimeagen/vim-be-good. It's a set of game-like exercises to practice the motions. This is also pretty cool and helped a lot: https://vimsnake.com/. It's a classic snake game where instead of using arrow keys, you use HJKL. And speaking of arrow keys, one thing I did very early on was disabling them (or, in reality, remapping them to noop) in normal mode so I was forced to move around the text using Vim Motions.

At first you will get frustrated because your brain will need some time to rewire in a way to absorb all the new abstractions Vim presents. It's a whole new logic of editing text. The most important thing is to stick to it and you will be surprised with how fast you end up picking things up. Of course, don't expect to be crazy fast in a few weeks. But right now, after a little over a month, I no longer feel that discomfort using Vim anymore. I suppose I'd still be faster on VS Code, but I really want to master Vim, so I'm sticking with it and I feel a constant improvement.

If you're not familiar with Vim, I'd encourage you to download a few Vim cheatsheets, the VimBeGood extension[1] and practice navigating code in Vim.

[1] https://github.com/ThePrimeagen/vim-be-good

For Neovim, then this Hardtime plugin will help you change the habit, and this vim-be-good from Primeagen helps learn vim motion. TJ DeVries is also a good source to learn.

A game for learning vim, in vim: https://github.com/ThePrimeagen/vim-be-good

I'm trying to NeoVim (and vi) in general having never used it. I decided to start with VimBeGood but I can't get it to launch a game. I've gotten the plugin installed but when I run :VimBeGood it just shows the screen saying "to play a game delete that line." I deleted words and noob but after that I'm lost. Nothing happens. What did I do wrong?

I recommend vim-be-good for practicing this

There are plugins like https://github.com/ThePrimeagen/vim-be-good that can help with practice.

I found https://github.com/ThePrimeagen/vim-be-good to be kind of a nice way to build some muscle memory for vim.

CotEditor doesn’t get enough due. Completely Mac-native and open source.

https://coteditor.com/

https://github.com/coteditor/

CotEditor is pretty nice.

Thanks for writing this up so beautifully. I'm an old Mac user and user Nova daily, mostly for Playdate development. It has been very unstable/crash-prone recently, agreed. The major crasher that lost me much work was fixed in a recent update, so I no longer want to delete the app but I would still appreciate it if they could take the accelerator off and fix all the crashers.

I also have the following installed BBEdit (for some advanced commands only it can do), Sublime Text (for quick opening and searching of directories of text).

My favourite editor: CotEditor https://coteditor.com (for it's unbelievable speed of launching, solid language/character-set support in particular Japanese; let down in only one way - it won't open folders of files). Highly recommended!

CotEditor - Price: Free Text editor for macOS that features syntax highlighting and a user-friendly interface.

CotEditor, which is like TextEdit except actually useful for non-text documents (e.g. I write a lot of Markdown in it).

CotEditor - Plain text editor but with many more features and a clean macOS UI. Absolutely a must-have for basic file editing (e.g. Markdown).

Some recommendations: - Find a better mail client, the default is archaic. - ProtonVPN truly speaks for itself. - AdGuard For Safari is unbeatable. - The Unarchiver, for all your unzipping needs. - Infuse or INAA for video media. - CotEditor for your coding/text editing. - Rectangle for app window snapping. - LuLu stops unauthorized outgoing connects. - Do Not Disturb, if you leave it unattended often. - Aerials is beautiful. Make it your screensaver.

As others gave mentioned VSCode is probably the best replacement but for something less overkill I often use CotEditor. It’s downloaded via the App Store but is free, open source, apple silicon ready and also has a command line helper tool. https://coteditor.com

I like CotEditor