Well, that was an intense reaction. Did you have any experience like this in your own life?

You have an understandable revulsion to relying on external sources which can be seen as unreliable and inefficient, and a commendable trait of independently learning from the manual, which is pretty self-reliant!

Do you have any examples from your own life where you didn't discover something for a long time after using it, but were happy when you did?

Some things in life are meant to be discovered and others are meant to be learned. There are plenty of opportunities for haha moments with the former but not so much with the latter. Assuming you are a "tech worker" of some sorts, your editor, your OS, your shell, your languages and frameworks, etc. are all tools meant to be learned and mastered, not fidget toys.

Discovering insert mode completion in Vim after 9 years is a failure, not something to celebrate.

This just hit as probably the most powerful comment I've read on here in the 15 years I've been reading. Wow.

Regretfully, I can think of dozens of {tools|processes|concepts} I treated as "fidget toys" rather than critical things to be learned and mastered. It fucking hurts to think about it.

This comment is the right attitude and I hope to think of this often. Thank you.

Haha! Dude, careful what you're praising here.

You don't want to encourage this guy to think he's able decide what's a failure or success for other people, do you? Haha! He can't, of course.

He doesn't exactly seem to have 'benevolence' written over his comments here, tho he does make some good points. So just be careful what you're praising, and and might be enabling. Hahaha! Right? :)

I guess that depends on your perspective! I'm celebrating it! :) Do you have instances in your life where you've failed?

The name of this site is not "tech worker news" though ;)

There is the typical experience in IT, that too many people have the mindset of not reading manuals and just try to figure out things on their own. Because of which there is for decades the typical reaction of experts in form of RTFM (Read The Fucking Manual!).

HN is degrading quickly thanks to comments like this. I've used vim for a long time, have worked in high-level engineering positions (lead, principal, similar roles) for decades with huge companies you've no doubt heard of as well as the US government. I've published articles and software going back to the 90s. Based on the content of your comment I think it's likely I was programming in vi(m) before you were born.

I have never read the manual for vim, nor for most software that I use. I'm a "learn by doing" type - optimal methods of learning vary and is subjective. There are plenty of people who because of ADHD or another reason simply don't learn best from manuals.

The vitriol belongs on reddit.

The Vim manual (:help) is not particularly well organized for discoverability.

It's not all in a single file: it's chopped up into files like usr_01.txt, usr_02.txt. That limits the scope of searching.

A web search for "Vim manual all in one page" turns up nothing. (Contrast with GNU programs which have HTML manuals that are both in separate nodes linked together, or all in one HTML page.)

Completion is not at all mentioned in the topic headings at the top of :help; literally, the word does not appear anywhere in that table of contents. That's in spite of there being a section of the TOC headed "REFERENCE MANUAL: These files explain every detail of Vim.".

None of the linked files have a description blurb mentioning completion.

Or sessions, for that matter. I used Vim for about 25 years before starting to make use of sessions.

What is in the manual is not all useful; if you were to read that whole thing, you'd be wading through furlongs of "meh" to find an inch of "wow, useful". And at the end, you would still be installing extensions. E.g. the built-in switching among buffers is pretty poor; Vim benefits from an extension for that.

You can't always imagine what a feature is like to use from the way it's described. (Push these buttons to get this effect.) You sometimes have to experiment with it to get it.

Well, neither vi nor Vim existed before I was born so, there.

> I have never read the manual for vim, nor for most software that I use.

Good for you, bad for your employers/clients/teammates.

> optimal methods of learning vary and is subjective

No. _Prefered_ methods do.

> There are plenty of people who because of ADHD or another reason simply don't learn best from manuals.

Picking up bits here and bits there, is not learning. It is just being lazy and clumsy.

> Picking up bits here and bits there, is not learning. It is just being lazy and clumsy.

This is at best a lack of understanding of how attention disorders work, at worst a lack of empathy.

Some people are only able to commit things to memory after putting it into practice many times over. Engineering roles nowadays often require you to be intimately familiar with a few languages, frameworks, CI pipelines, databases, cloud offerings, many protocols, and more. This job has grown well beyond the days when your sole responsibility was a small set of modules and a narrow cross section of technology.

The bandwidth for reading a manual just to lose the ability to recall it a week after changing context is just not there for a lot of people, and to be indignant about the learning mechanisms others use to get around these obstacles just seems silly. Yeah I probably would have googled “vim autocomplete” after some time, but modern tech sensory overload would likely have me googling something else.

> This is at best a lack of understanding of how attention disorders work, at worst a lack of empathy.

You can even call it total lack of care. There are literally dozens of readily available treatments for your condition so excuse me for not shedding a tear. My glasses help me see better so I can't play the myopia card. Your medication helps you function better so spare us the ADHD card.

> Some people are only able to commit things to memory after putting it into practice many times over.

_Everyone_ needs that at varying levels, not just people wearing the four-letter badge. And Reading The Fucking Manual—specifically Vim's which is by far the best I've seen—doesn't replace that _at all_. It's literally _never_ one or the other. You learn the stuff from first principles _and then_ you apply it. Learning in the abstract, without applying, is useless and "doing" without proper foundations is useless too. The only difference is that only the former is fruitless, which convinces those who do the latter that it's somewhat OK.

> The bandwidth for reading a manual just to lose the ability to recall it a week after changing context is just not there for a lot of people

What's also there is their medication.

> and to be indignant about the learning mechanisms others use to get around these obstacles just seems silly.

What's silly is refusing to take one's meds. Or celebrating failure.

> Yeah I probably would have googled “vim autocomplete” after some time, but modern tech sensory overload would likely have me googling something else.

Googling "vim autocomplete" would just have been another cop-out and another failure anyway.

I wasn’t really looking for pity, just sharing the perspective of a person who has dealt with moderately severe ADHD. I’m doing just fine now and am enjoying my work again. Medication was a critical part of that journey, but attention disorders don’t really work like myopia. You normally don’t walk into a psychiatrist’s office, get fitted for a dosage, and then walk out recovered. It’s one piece of a greater treatment strategy that can be complex and wildly different from patient to patient. In one sense though it is like myopia because at some level of severity there is no total correction, and you have to narrow the scope of your life in order to get things, often at the expense of other responsibilities. I think we can both agree that you have to play the cards you’re dealt, but I would just encourage you—at the very least—to not bring others down if the way they play them doesn’t make sense to you. It may be working for them in the long run.

Well said, brother! I hope this guy gets some lessons out of all this. Hahaha!

I mean it's supposed to just be a positive expression of joy...and then this guy sees that and... he's angry?? Haha.

And then... that's everyone else's problem?? hhahah.

Like what!? :) Have a good one, brother! :)

Hahaha! This is so funny, thank you for sharing your world view!

A position you advance is that there is value in reading the manual, and organized, discipline, self-reliant learning, that emphasizes structure progress toward mastery. Paired with that is the notion of taking pride in mastery of one's tools, equating the "technical arts" to a sort of "craftsmanship". These are undoubtedly a positive takes, and undeniably a useful learning strategy, and a commendable goal. Pursued with vigor, and if it's a fit for a given individual, such a strategy or approach, will likely to serve anyone well, in any endeavor, who practices it.

However, it's important to remember that there are many ways that you can accomplish your goals of learning and mastery, and that the exact methods and practices could be very different for different people. Just like the aphorisms "there's not one path to success" or "success is rarely a straight line", even the path of learning is well-known to follow an ascending series of peaks and troughs: the so-called, "Learning Curve". In short, while it's certainly good to read the manual, as you say, it's also not the only path to learning, and it's beneficial to appreciate that.

Yet that's not the only stance of interest in your comments in this thread. And it may be pertinent to discuss this "other aspect" of your comments, that while it may be somewhat "outside your wheelhouse" nevertheless will serve you equally well, if not substantially better, than your chosen learning method, in your endeavors and interactions in future. This other aspect makes regard to how you communicate.

So, if we take a look at your comments in this thread, it seems what you're saying is: there is one way of doing things regarding learning, it's the way you do things, and it's the right way, and any other way to do things, is lazy, clumsy, and likely the result of someone being disabled and not taking their medication? So, in essence, you're right, and if people question that or don't follow your way, they are failing and probably need medication?

In simple terms it looks as if you're being overly negative. In more detail, while it initially seemed you were simply temporarily grumpy, and trying to take it out on others, analysis and reflection of the totality of your work on this thread indicate you've developed your perspective over a long time. This perspective is basically the superiority of your way and your belief in your role as the rightful judge of others, who differ from you, and are inferior (failure, lazy, clumsy, disabled), is that right?

As you said above: good for your own confidence I guess, but bad for your employer/family/society, etc. It is not an approach which cultivates psychological safety for others. The strident and angry tone of your initial comment, combined with the expletive language you use is easy to interpret as rude, and abusive. The use of pejorative descriptions of those who differ from you is likely to be seen as superior, abusive, and bigoted.

While on the surface your view seems funny (I'm sorry to say, in a laughing at sense), it also feels kind of sad.

I still think some personal unhappiness must be driving your choice to go down this path, but that particular form it takes seems to be more a strong suit reaction you have developed over time in order to cope with such hardships.

You are clearly intelligent, and likely reasonably well to do, but the emphasis you place on your superiority could be read as a compensation tactic to make up for ways in which your achievements did not rise to your ambitions.

So I'm guessing you feel underappreciated in your work or life. This sense of being misunderstood, and underappreciation could then manifest in this way of acting where you are willing to risk people's dislike of you in order to act abusive and superior, because your experience has led you to believe, people won't appreciate you as you deserve anyway, even if you're nice.

So, in a sense, a nothing to lose attitude, which interestingly contrasts with the mask of superiority you wear. To put it another way, you trade social capital for the ego hit of superiority, because why value the opinions of others if you or your way is better than them, anyway? It's a neat, circular, self-contained and self-fulfilling delusion: a robust defensive tactic. One paradox arises in that, by pretending you are superior, you limit your ability to learn, undercutting the very justification for your pretense of superiority, in the first place, and your goals of mastery and being "right".

One way to think about it is that this kind of 'asshole nerd' trope is often unfortunately tolerated because of the nerd aspect: think of pre-reformation Linus, for example. But this kind of enabling nerd environment for your abuse is unhealthy, and may have contributed to denying yourself the treatment you could get to help you improve. It's an interesting contrast with the way you seek to paint others as needing treatment for a mental issue, as this could be read as a shield to conceal the fact of your suffering from one yourself, or as a way to deny to yourself that you're the problem, or disclaim responsibility for improving, or getting treatment.

Basically in your behavior we see a constellation of robust defensive tactics, likely crafted by an intelligent mind, to protect someone clearly deeply in pain. The defenses enable you to be productive, but at what cost? Especially to those around you. You in effect trade their psychological safety which you attempt to erode with your abuse, for your own, which you attempt to shore up with your pretense of superiority. It is, then, a very and essentially, selfish tactic. It's understandable, because you're in pain, but that we can understand it and empathize with you, doesn't mean your behavior is good, nor should be tolerated.

The defenses keep you injected with the addictive mainline of a superiority ego hit or reward endorphins resulting from that, but that only deepens the problem, and shields you from being in touch with and processing the pain, that could be your path to heal, if you're brave enough to face it.

But I totally understand if you don't, because...facing the pain can be incredibly scary. But if you don't, then, what's the alternative? Either you surrender your defenses as a result of social censure when you are not healed, leading you to suffer more...or you keep your defenses, but don't progress...leading you to continue incorrectly and unjustifiably trying to take out your emotions on others? This may cause suffering for those you encounter, and limits your experience of joy by pushing people away. You're smart, so you've likely already noticed this pattern in your own life. But, being smart is not enough, you have to know how to navigate it, and it's not obvious. Plus, you have to have the courage to face the things...and the adoption of defenses like yours indicates an avoidance, which is completely understandable, because who wants to face pain?

So, I don't think meanness is the right approach to deal with this kind of attitude, because clearly it results from suffering. Of course, sometimes boundaries must be set, counter-punches must be made. But, paradoxically, a general approach of meanness will only reinforce your delusion that you are under-appreciated and need to respond with hostility: meanness is only training for strengthening the defensive tactic your attitude clearly is.

Just like former 'jerk nerd' Linus eventually listened to feedback, and sought help, and now apparently is doing better, it's possible for people to change their behavior. If in your reflections you think this may apply to you and be useful for you, I encourage you to take the brave step of owning that and seeking help. But Linus is probably not the best example, there are many people who have become better people. And the pattern you display, is not unique to you. It is very common, and I believe it's very solvable. If you're willing to do the work. But...thing is man, there's no "manual" -- haha.

Also, enhance your calm, man! There's plenty of ways to do things: it can work for you, but doesn't mean it's the only way. And even you are "right" in your way, doesn't mean it's the only "right" way, and doesn't mean everyone else is "wrong". If you're not open to ways outside of yours as having value, you're unlikely to really learn to master what you seek to master. If you're already "right", and anything else is wrong, you're unlikely to learn and improve, undermining the very goal you say you have. Have a good one, man! And get help for this stuff, I believe you can do better! :)

Right? It was crazy. That monsieur should enhance his calm. Oh well, anyone can be dealing with something other people don't understand, I guess. Thanks for sticking up for me! :)

It's strange how people get so worked up over vim (for better or worse)