Vim: Not Your Grandpa's Editor

Good review of commands, but only showed 1 minute of demo. How do I switch between modes? How do I use it in real life? What's visual mode? When you get stuck in a mode, how do you get out?

This was a hastily-prepared talk of course, admittedly. I learned some things here. I think this talk has the potential to become great, with a little humor, and some more real-world usage -- much like some of the git talks that are making the rounds lately. I would have liked to see demonstrations of how some of vim's features are useful, and rather than reading a list of options, hone it down to 2-4 really super useful options and provide a link to a sample .vimrc file. I use puphpet, which has an included .vimrc with good comments for many of the options.

Frank was put in the unenviable position of having to pull a talk out of his nether regions, and I think with that in mind, he did a fine job.

I hate vi(m). I mash the keyboard to get out of it so I can get into nano instead. While big on theory and light on execution, the notes I took in this session enabled me to actually use vim on a machine yesterday to accomplish something I've never even done in nano, so for me that makes it worth it.

With some spit and polish (and more real world vim stuff), this will be a great talk for the vi-shy.

For a talk that was hastily put together for reason out of Frank's control I applaud him for this talk being as good as it was. I agree a little more demo time would have been nice and a little more explanation on how to switch modes and does it do it automatically in some cases? It sure seamed like it vim does in some cases. I have never used vim for a lot of the same reason Arthur Chocholacek said. To me its not intuitive enough, but I must say that after Frank's explanation of how it works, I think I could at least us it when I have no other choice.

Suggestions for future talks:
I think you could lessen all the info on what every command dose and what all the settings do in the config file. Highlight the key ones that are used the most or have the biggest "Got ya". This would leave more time for examples. Do the examples slower and verbalize the keys your hitting. This might help those that have never used vim or don't use it because its not intuitive.