VI Improved (VIM)

I read all the negative reviews, and have to admit that I agree with many of the sentiments. The book IS hard to navigate. There ARE many typos. It IS hard to find material. Despite all this, I still find the book useful -- one of the most useful books on my bookshelf. I can open up to practically any page and chances are good I'll find something new and useful. Additionally, commands are grouped together in a nice reference style manner which is often lost to me while thumbing through Vim's (admittedly) lousy help file system. And the graphical demonstrations are worth their weight in gold. So while the book is certainly flawed, it has some really nice features and high points. But more importantly (ultimately, THE most important thing) is that I find the book utterly useful. That one fact alone trumps all the bad points and is the driving force behind my 4 star rating (I wish I could give it 4.5 stars). I purchased the book new, and never regretted a single penny that I spent for it.

I loaned my original copy of this book to a co-worker who later quit, and took the book with him. I missed the book so much, I went and ordered another copy. And this was at a time in my life when I was actually clearing my book shelves of old books in an effort to simplify my life. This book is that good. Vim is arguably one of the best text editors in existence, and if you want to learn Vim I can't think of any better book than this one. Even if you're just a casual user who is going to edit a few config files on a Unix/Linx machine, this is the book for you; the first three chapters will have you well on your way to using Vim efficiently. If you're a programmer or advanced user, you'll also benefit from the later chapters. Some say that Vim's learning curve is too steep, and prefer to use simpler editors like Pico or Joe (or even Notepad, on Windows), but this book will take away your fear and will make learning Vim easy. Even if you just read the first few chapters, it's worth it. Highly recommended.

I've been a vi/vim user on and off for the past 3 years at school and whenever I was accessing a server on the production floor. I've gotten by with basic editting commands but I wanted to learn some of the more advanced features that vim offers.This book has been invaluable as a rough learning tool and a quick reference. Provided I actually know that a feature exists, I've been able to find the right syntax for it within a few minutes of flipping through the index/table of contents.As a result, I'm now more or less a consistent vim user on both Linux and Windows platforms.If you've ever wanted to know vim in more detail, then this book will be a good help.

Having been an Emacs user for a while, the notion of trying out another editor (one often derided by other Emacs users) was intimidating. Steve Oualline's book made it a lot easier to learn it, and add another tool to my belt.I know this book isn't perfect, and it does have some errors. Every computer book does, and I didn't go into this book expecting it to be perfect. Steve's explanations were clear, his style of writing made the book easy to read, and follow. New Rider's design only enhanced the quality of the work inside.Not only that but Steve does a great job of explaining how to get into and around the help in VIM, and that to me, made up for the small infrequent errors in an otherwise beautiful book.