Discussion: How to teach text editors?

[DamienIrving]

In the meeting on 8 October 2019, we discussed how we might go about teaching novices how to use a text editor. It was noted that a bunch of screen shots makes for pretty boring reading, so instead it was suggested that editors could be taught via challenges. In other words, learners would pick their preferred editor and the challenges would ask them to search online to find out how to use a series of tricks/shortcuts that are common to most editors and that have the most potential to save people time.

[ChristinaLK]

So... Vim Adventure: https://vim-adventures.com/
Or, vimtutor, come to think of it.

;)

Seriously though, I like this idea, especially in the context of a "these are common operations, find how to do them" and a file that's laid out specifically for practice.

What are the common operations? I'd say go to beginning of line, go to end of line, delete in chunks, cut/paste, find and maybe replace.