May 21, 2024

Books about vim

The vimtutor recommends a book by Steve Oualline (2001) called "Vim - Vi Improved". I had this book and thought it was awful. I either burned it or gave it away. At this point if you buy a 23 year old book on Vim, you deserve what you get.

I recently acquired "Practical Vim, 2nd edition" 2015 by Drew Neil. This book is widely recommended. I like this book. It covers Vim 8 (I am now running Vim 9) and has taught me many new things. It is a "cookbook" book, which I usually despise. This one is good. It is organized by chapter on general topics and tips in each chapter move from basic to advanced. It may be 7 years old, but Vim 9 didn't seem to introduce any radical new features, so you are in good shape. There are lots of things that are not covered. There is almost nothing about the vimrc, vimscript, and plugins. But there are other good resources for these, and this keeps the book focused on core editing concepts.

Drew Neil has another book, "Modern Vim" that talks about NeoVim, which I won't talk about much (as I am not using it). I don't know a thing about this book.


Have any comments? Questions? Drop me a line!

Tom's vim pages / tom@mmto.org