Violets are blue,
Roses are red,
Intelligence is learned,
Can you learn too?

This morning I read that poem on vimtutor while trying to yank and paste some lines here and there. Initially, I found it funny, but on a second iteration at the exercise, I could not but stop and think about it.

Just yesterday I started my apprenticeship at 8th Light, here in London. The first task that I was assigned was to complete a simple kata in Ruby with vim under 10 minutes. Of course, while to some it might sound trivial, these two days have been intense for me. I have encountered a series of challenges, starting from learning the standard British keyboard layout to learning a new language through having to muscle-memorize over 20 shortcuts in order to be able to write in an editor! By the time the day had finished, I was mentally tired, happy, but tired.

Now, back to that poem I was talking about, I found it interesting for two reasons: the first is that after fighting against all those vim shortcuts you start questioning your own ability to actually learn all of them. The second is that, contrary to that first thought, we’ve all experienced the satisfaction of finally learning something after a lot of hard work. And not just intellectually speaking, but also on other areas: skating, cooking, rock-climbing, learning a new language…

So, after two intense days, I finally managed to be able to complete the kata just using vim. And I’m bringing home that satisfaction, of learning something not just new, but also challenging, and how not, refreshing.