Hacker Remix

Show HN: Hardtime.nvim – break bad habits and master Vim motions

194 points by m4xshen 1 day ago | 76 comments

BrouteMinou 22 hours ago

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.

skydhash 21 hours ago

I think it's more about getting used to f-F,t-T,A,I, and <semicolon> which can be quicker especially with code. You can also add easymotion or similar plugins for the powered version of those.

roydivision 8 hours ago

Some nice explanations of f and t:

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/12495442/what-do-the-f-a...

WhyNotHugo 19 hours ago

TIL! `f` looks really useful, thanks.

mystifyingpoi 21 hours ago

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,;;".

WhyNotHugo 19 hours ago

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.

ramses0 14 hours ago

A big help for me is H/M/L - mnemonic high/middle/low.

Moves to the top/bottom/middle of the viewport, and the. I'll jjjj/kkkk away! (or probably just search, mostly).

suprjami 18 hours ago

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.

https://github.com/justinmk/vim-sneak

sevg 10 hours ago

I quite like leap.nvim:

https://github.com/ggandor/leap.nvim

BrouteMinou 16 hours ago

That seems reasonable, I will definitely test that out.

Thank you.

jackhalford 19 hours ago

`set relativenumber` to see where you’re jumping

ramses0 14 hours ago

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.

sureglymop 15 hours ago

I always use f-F, t-T to move within lines, have found that to be the quickest.

konart 19 hours ago

>No way I am starting to count how many characters there are

You don't have to. There are many ways to do a jump without counting. Some of the require plugins like flash.nvim, some do require pressing `;` multiple times

Xerox9213 15 hours ago

Relative line numbers can help with j and k.

baobun 17 hours ago

Do you even `%` to navigate to matching ()[]{}? Often useful to jump straight to function end from signature, lispy paran-nests, and so on.

moistoreos 13 hours ago

llllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll

qazxcvbnm 1 day ago

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.

mercer 21 hours ago

see I just run emacs to get the same effect

blahgeek 23 hours ago

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

kiaofz 22 hours ago

I was the exact same until I started using relative line numbers. Then I can just look at a line and see that it's N lines down and jump there immediately. With j or k repeat I'll often over shoot and then have to go back which is kind of annoying.

codr7 13 hours ago

How is this easier than jumping straight to the line with absolute numbers?

hellcow 13 hours ago

15j is easier than 4879gg. It’s a little bit quicker on big files—not a huge difference.

lblume 10 hours ago

The information is also more relevant. How many lines a function or block has might make a difference, but the absolute file position is, more often than not, irrelevant.

3abiton 18 hours ago

Did you get better in maths?

soraminazuki 15 hours ago

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.

rybosome 23 hours ago

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.

skydhash 23 hours ago

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.

umbra07 18 hours ago

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

christophilus 23 hours ago

Why’d you switch to emacs, and do you use evil mode?

skydhash 22 hours ago

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.

eviks 20 hours ago

Why would you ever calculate relative jump yourself instead of having relative line numbers in the gutter?

And yes, for a few lines it's fine, the plugin has this number configurable.

rybosome 18 hours ago

Thanks for letting me know, I wasn’t aware that was possible!

WhyNotHugo 18 hours ago

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.

rgoulter 23 hours ago

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.

eviks 20 hours ago

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"

ryanmcbride 23 hours ago

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.

mathstuf 22 hours ago

Also gives me time to plan what I'm going to do once I get there. Or I spot a bug/relevant code snippet along the way.

fwip 23 hours ago

Huh, I don't find the number row very difficult to touch type. But then again, I do have long fingers.

marcyb5st 24 hours ago

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).

m4xshen 24 hours ago

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...

marcyb5st 23 hours ago

Correct! Thanks for pointing that out. I never investigated and just rolled with it :)

AdieuToLogic 14 hours ago

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.

xeyownt 8 hours ago

Interestingly enough, many games on PC standardized the WASD keys for moving, which might be seen as "left-handed". However when touch-typing, there isn't really a difference between left and right hands.

nosioptar 24 minutes ago

WASD is only lefty if you don't use the mouse. Otherwise, WASD really sucks when using a lefty mouse.

mnurzia 17 hours ago

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.

johnisgood 6 hours ago

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?

perrygeo 24 hours ago

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.

WhyNotHugo 19 hours ago

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.

suprjami 18 hours ago

That's a good start, but then you develop the same anti-pattern like typing jjjjj to go down 5 lines instead of 5j

That's what hardtime solves.

unshavedyak 1 day ago

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.

n8cpdx 20 hours ago

This is really cool, I would love something like this for the VS Code vim emulation. I’m constantly trying to improve my usage but bad habits are hard to break, especially when even the bad habits feel so productive compared to not having vim.

lylejantzi3rd 24 hours ago

This is awesome. This might be the thing that gets me to stop being a dinosaur and switch to neovim.

nickandbro 1 day ago

Love it! working on similar tool tips for my project:

https://vimgolf.ai

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!

foob 1 day ago

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.

horsellama 23 hours ago

same

but clicking on the hamburger menu it shows a link to “Motions”, which seems to be the first level/demo of the game

nickandbro 23 hours ago

Sorry, yeah I am adding more levels, and will fix that! Thanks for testing!

shlomo_z 1 day ago

This looks cool. Is it free?

nickandbro 1 day ago

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.

linnnus 24 hours ago

I'm always hesitant about signing up for services. would be great if there was a demo that didn't require creating an account!

JLO64 24 hours ago

I wouldn’t mind signing up without a demo if there was more information about what this is exactly.

nickandbro 23 hours ago

Great feedback! Will role out a update with that information

nickandbro 24 hours ago

Point taken! Right now I am exploring a way where users can test the service on the landing page, without signing up.

darkwater 24 hours ago

I'm totally going to install it, thank you very much for developing it!

avinassh 22 hours ago

This looks great! Is it compatible with lazyvim's installations? Because I could not get it working and I suspect it is conflicting with some other plugin

xeyownt 8 hours ago

There is a conflict with plugin "FastFold". But the easy fix is to disable the onoremap and xnoremap made in that plugin.

m4xshen 22 hours ago

Yeah it is compatible. You can open an issue with more detail if it is still not working.

SuperManifolds 22 hours ago

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

lherron 21 hours ago

Repo name checks out.

Looks awesome, will not try!

yegle 23 hours ago

I'm a bit disappointed that this can only be used with NeoVim yet it claims to help you master Vim.

Sorry not meant to be a criticism. Maybe this is the last push for me to switch to using NeoVim.

ilvez 23 hours ago

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.

mystifyingpoi 21 hours ago

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.

xeyownt 8 hours ago

What's the difficulty to switch from Vim to Neovim?

I switched few years ago, and the switch was instant.

Afaik Neovim is fully backward compatible, unless maybe for some obscure features.

drabbiticus 23 hours ago

Not a criticism, just noting that it says it helps master Vim motions, not Vim

thdhhghgbhy 1 day ago

Great work.

alabhyajindal 1 day ago

Very cool!