Show HN: Hardtime.nvim – break bad habits and master Vim motions
(github.com)214 points by m4xshen 7 months ago
214 points by m4xshen 7 months ago
I used to be a big fan of easymotion until I discovered that / is also a motion and that with inline search enabled you can use CTRL-G to cycle through results.
Example: d / foo, first foo will be highlighted, use CTRL-G to select the next one if not correct (repeat if necessary; CTRL-T cycles backwards), ENTER to delete until highlighted section.
Unfortunately CTRL-G is not implemented in IdeaVIM.
Some nice explanations of f and t:
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/12495442/what-do-the-f-a...
That's the point of this plugin - holding "wwwwwwww..." is a bad habit, because it's very likely there is an objectively better way of getting there. Not necessarily "142l" but "/<piece of word><ENTER>" or "f,;;".
At first I had to count characters. Over time, it becomes intuitive. In the same way that if someone holds up three fingers you don't count "one, two, three", you immediately perceive that they are holding up three fingers.
For numbers under 10, I usually hit the right amount. For numbers around 30, I might be off by one to five, but move on from then. When I want to remove similar prefixes from multiple non-consecutive lines, I might use things like 31x, go to the next instance (maybe continuing a search with n), and press period.
Honestly though, if you're moving forward 31 characters, there's often an easier approach, like 4w (move forward three Words). Again, at first I had to consciously think about which combination to use. Over time it becomes second nature.
I still use jjjj sometimes. It's imperfect, but at least it's the human that's the limiting factor, and not the software.
Agree. vim-sneak is the answer to this, you can reach anywhere with maximum 3 key presses. It's very intuitive and easy to pick up. If I had to pick only one Vim plugin it would be sneak.
I quite like leap.nvim:
Adding flash.nvim to the list here, super convenient search labels.
That seems reasonable, I will definitely test that out.
Thank you.
There was a guide that mentioned "scrabble tile" movement. `fj` is quicker than `fe` because J is way less common than E.
Once you get "near", then zeroing in on your target (eg: `fj`, `Fa` for "adjacent") can be the fastest/most accurate way to get to where you want to go.
I always use f-F, t-T to move within lines, have found that to be the quickest.
A somewhat more “complete” solution that doesn’t give you hints (thus doesn’t rely on the plugin support for all of vim’s vast functionalities), but conditions your instincts to get better: increase the latency of my whole terminal (c.f. https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/778196/how-to-add-d...) (also see the comment) by running my terminal session on a ssh session into my own machine through a ProxyCommand of the command delay.
I’ve been using vim for 10+ years. However I honestly don’t see the downside of repeating h or j to move up/down (with the key repeat delay adjusted to a small value). It’s more intuitive than using say 15j, which involves recognizing some number in the screen and then look at the keyboard to type because the upper number row cannot be easily touch typed
Exactly. h or j repeated is widely dismissed as inefficient. But that ignores two important things:
First, you can hold down h or j and use visual clues to know when to stop. It's one keypress on the homerow, no reason to even glance at the keyboard. Eyes on the monitor = better focus. One keystroke.
Second, thinking in line numbers is one more piece of context to load up into your brain (find the line number), then act on (type out incantation), then context switch back to whatever you were doing before. By contrast, holding j until you're in the spot takes up almost zero working memory. You can think while it's happening! It's a small and subtle difference but that 200ms pause in thought process really does add up - not in wall time (jumping by line is probably "faster") but in contiguous focus time. Having to invoke any multi-part command is a distraction from your core work. Again, one lazy keystroke with immediate visual feedback > some complex combination of keystrokes.
An one small pitch for treesitter - rather than use j/k to navigate by line, set up some keybindings to jump by treesitter element (functions, methods, etc). I've got mine set to +/-. This lets you move in the same "dumb scrolling" way but by jumping to semantically-relevant parts automatically rather than line by line.
Agreed. I wonder if this is somewhat revealing of the mental processes of the creators.
To me, if my cursor is a few lines away from another line, the easiest way for me to get there is by either using h/j a few times, or looking at the absolute line number and doing that with gg.
Relative jumps are only useful to me in macros. Calculating a relative jump myself would 100% pull me out of the flow state where I just want to go up/down a few rows.
I have no proof of this, but I’d guess that the creator of this pattern didn’t feel the same way.
The best tip I got, was to rely more on search instead of other kind of movement. Especially when doing a bunch of editing. Things like easymotion/sneak/avy works best when reading/reviewing.
While I loved multi cursor with sublime. After I moved to Vim, I’ve never needed it. It’s either search~repeat or a macro. Now I’m using emacs, and it’s mostly occur-mode and macro. Grep edit is nice for bigger refactoring.
I really, really like flash/easymotion/etc because I effectively also use the same jump motions all the time in my browser (with vimium/tridactyl). So I have double the muscle memory, and I context-switch less between my browser and neovim, compared to if I was primarily using relative line jumps in neovim
Why’d you switch to emacs, and do you use evil mode?
Vim is a fine editor, but emacs has better tooling. I got in touch with Emacs while learning Common Lisp, and I got hooked by the extensive capabilities and customization available. Vim is fine for extension, but you have to build most of them yourself.
I tried evil mode, but it clashes with other keybinding in some places and I got unhappy with it. There's a philosophy conflict there. With vim, you're expected to have a command for an action and then bind it to a key. Your editing workflow is to compose those keys.
But with emacs, you're more expected to have a view and then a set of actions for that view. The power of emacs comes with how easy it is to integrate all those views together. For a programming workflow, you have the file explorer, the symbol explorer, the search result (single file and all files), the version control, the docs, the compilation|build window, the shell, the project tasks,... all together in the same place and linked to each other. With vim, you have to compose all those with a multiplexer and other tools (with conflicting bindings) to get there. Vim is still better for editing, but Emacs is better for workflows.
Getting used to thinking about multi-line motions via 5j helped me train to visualise lines that way.
Over time, I started using things like 13dd or 7yy with more ease.
Of course, `set relativenumber` is always recommended.
> Calculating a relative jump myself would 100% pull me out of the flow state where I just want to go up/down a few rows.
Yeah, you can't be a purist about it. If you're hard-focused and jjjjj is the first thing that comes to mind, then that's fine. When you're doing lighter work is when you have the spare mental capacity to train and improve on your workflow.
It's nice to have good tools that are practical for navigating around the text.
For jumping around what's on screen, I think 'easymotion' ("jump anywhere on screen by pressing two characters") & variations are best in terms of how quickly they let you navigate for how easy it is to use.
There are countless more convenient keys that you can use to navigate up and down without counting. Basic ones are /, *, n, N, H, M, L, {, }, %, ctrl-]. ]c, [c when you're in a diff buffer or have a Git plugin that offers this key. ]d, [d, [q, ]q, ]l, [l if you use Neovim.
C-d, C-u, {}, () and searches are better anyway. You should also be using g, so say you are defining a function and need to check where it's going to be used on main. For optimal usage you should always have main marked as something, so you would exit insert mode, gm, look around in main, gi to go back to where you were typing last
You don't need to use the upper row, bind numbers to right thumb modifier + numpad-like uio jkl m,.
Or instead of 15j use another jump to command that accepts those letters as numbers
Or have some jump type of command that displays a-z labels 1 per row in the middle and you can jump without numbers and without shifting focus to the gutter
But yes, the most basic motion will still be more "intuitive"
I've pretty much always struggled with this too. I have a numpad that I can touchtype easily but if I'm taking my hands off homerow I may as well use a mouse at that point.
I use it and helped me greatly! Thanks a lot for putting this together.
There are few minor things I don't agree as bad habits. For instance, Home/End should be allowed at least when you are in edit mode as they armonize with almost any other text input (not just editors, but also the text inputs/areas on websites).
Thank you! Home/End are actually allowed in Hardtime default config. I'm guessing that you are using AstroNvim since its community default config disables them: https://github.com/AstroNvim/astrocommunity/blob/main/lua/as...
The way I like to explain vim to people new to it is; start from "the inside out" on a QWERTY keyboard and assume most people are right-handed.
By that, I mean the hjkl navigation keys are the first kind of navigation people want to do and are conveniently easily typed with the right hand in a traditional "home-row" position.
Next, very common editing commands are associated with home-row keys associated with the left hand; asd, with finding a character on the current line associated with f (and F for finding backward).
After those, other lesser used, but still very useful, commands are associated with the rows above and below the "home-row".
Finally, repeating any of these is bound to prefixed numbers, which are of course two rows above the "home-row" on a QWERTY keyboard.
Modifiers such as Shift, Ctrl, and others are approximately the same distance as the numeric row, unless one binds CapsLock to be Ctrl on most modern keyboards (note that Sun's keyboard got it right and had Ctrl in the position most keyboards now have CapsLock).
Interestingly enough, learning vim can often times follow the above distances from hjkl with great result.
> Interestingly enough, many games on PC standardized the WASD keys for moving, which might be seen as "left-handed".
To me, WASD for avatar movement makes sense even in the context of "right-handed bias" in that if a gamer is using a mouse, odds are they are right-handed and the mouse is positioned to the right of their keyboard.
And if a gamer is left handed, it's a minor inconvenience to shift the chair position such that their right hand manipulates WASD and their dominant left hand uses a mouse on the left side of their keyboard.
Of course, many modern games allow custom key bindings, so a left-handed gamer could use IJKL instead of WASD if they so chose.
Despite using vim and neovim for over 20 years, I'm still apparently a caveman when it comes to navigating. I both love and hate that this plugin calls me out for it. The "Hardtime Report" is a great feature, really shows just how pervasive my bad habits are. This could either help me improve - or force me to uninstall it in anger.
This was the neovim plugin that really caused me to stick with it. I've been using this plugin for over a year, after the (short) initial period of frustration with the delays I was able to start really flying with vim motions. Now I can't imagine going back to a regular text editor.
When I started using Vim many years ago, I mapped the arrow keys to no-op.
This made the biggest difference, more than anything else. It forced me to use hjkl and never the arrow keys.
Everything else is a bonus that comes by itself later.
This looks awesome! Wonder if something like this could be turned into a generalized optimization engine of sorts? Ie if the problem could be generalized for a set of available movement commands relative to used commands, you could apply it to any underlying platform.
Which is to say, i'd love to see this in Helix. I also toy with custom editors, and observability of available commands is high priority for me, a generalized solution here would be an elegant solve for that. It would also adapt to new features nicely.
This is awesome. This might be the thing that gets me to stop being a dinosaur and switch to neovim.
Love it! working on similar tool tips for my project:
EDIT: thanks all for the feedback! Sorry there are not more levels, but if you check back in a week am adding a level editor!
I signed up to give it a try, but when I click "Go to Levels" it takes me to https://vimgolf.ai/levels and I get a 404 error.
same
but clicking on the hamburger menu it shows a link to “Motions”, which seems to be the first level/demo of the game
Sorry, yeah I am adding more levels, and will fix that! Thanks for testing!
Thanks, it is, right now! And will have a generous free tier once finished. The only big reason I am making a priced option is for users who want AI tips to be able to have that option. Right now, I do that by having reasoning models like o3 solve the levels and then provide tips or verifying a level can be solved with certain motions.
I love the fact that it provides hints for faster Vim motion, and you get a report of your most common bad habits. Is there anything like this for Vim?
Been using this plugin for a while, really helped me kick a lot of bad habits. I enjoy how it lets you add custom rules. I really struggled to make myself use I and A, and kept doing ^i $i, so I told it to yell at me when I do that until I learned
I waited as well long time, but after switching my tooling and usage has improved a lot since lot of progressive community around modern tools that NVim supports. So I encourage to take a look.
I still keep vim configuration around but I've never felt the need for going back.
I'm making my (probably) 4th attempt in migrating from regular Vim to NeoVim, and while it's better now, the learning curve is still steep as hell. Going the kickstart.nvim route this time and boy, half of the stuff there is pure magic. Honestly feels like reading Nix incantations. Dynamic nature of Lua makes it even harder. Thankfully ChatGPT is pretty good in generating configs.
Not a criticism, just noting that it says it helps master Vim motions, not Vim
I always find it funny when people say to not repeat h-l, w-W keys for horizontal movement.
No way I am starting to count how many characters there are in front of my cursor just to have the satisfaction of typing "31-l"...
I am totally going to spam some 2w 3w llll until I reach the desired position.