I think what I did was just force myself to use it and if there was something in particular I wanted to do I would look it up, or if there was something that I was doing repeatedly I would try to find how to do it in the lowest number of keystrokes.
After I got the basic movements down (doing vimtutor if I needed refresher), then I would watch videos on youtube of peoples favourite keybinds, or lesser known keybinds. A lot of times this would open up a lot of things I didn't realize was possible.
Eventually I started to understand the vim "language", and things became natural to the point where I don't even really think about the keybinds I'm using, it just happens.
It was definitely a struggle at first though. If I could go back and be a TA again for intro to programming labs I would have found a way to give people extra credit for learning vim. The best time to start putting in the work is now, you'll thank yourself later.
If you program in C, google "Ctags" and the associated keybinds and vim command line argument (-t). Most useful utility for me personally.
After I got the basic movements down (doing vimtutor if I needed refresher), then I would watch videos on youtube of peoples favourite keybinds, or lesser known keybinds. A lot of times this would open up a lot of things I didn't realize was possible.
Eventually I started to understand the vim "language", and things became natural to the point where I don't even really think about the keybinds I'm using, it just happens.
It was definitely a struggle at first though. If I could go back and be a TA again for intro to programming labs I would have found a way to give people extra credit for learning vim. The best time to start putting in the work is now, you'll thank yourself later.
If you program in C, google "Ctags" and the associated keybinds and vim command line argument (-t). Most useful utility for me personally.