I agree wholeheartedly with pretty much everything you've said here. There is no magic "Vim cheat sheet" for new Vim users. To understand the power of Vim, you have to understand the power of its parts. It reminds me of playing with K'NEX as a kid: you either learn how to build magnificent things by learning how pieces combine to form powerful designs, or you blindly follow the built-in diagrams for prefabricated creations (not really understanding how they came to be) and then dump it a few days later out of boredom.
That said, I up-voted this submission solely because it's showing off Vim. That's what I try to do with the programmers I meet -- evangelize about Vim.
I'll never forget the first time I saw an ancient Vim user hacking away at code. It seriously blew me away, and I knew that I had to learn it. Via a combination of :help and O'Reilly's "Learning the Vi Editor", I learned. Four years later (and that's young for a Vim user), I'll never look back.
Point being: you can't learn via a cheat sheet. Dive into Vim, starting from the basics.
That said, I up-voted this submission solely because it's showing off Vim. That's what I try to do with the programmers I meet -- evangelize about Vim.
I'll never forget the first time I saw an ancient Vim user hacking away at code. It seriously blew me away, and I knew that I had to learn it. Via a combination of :help and O'Reilly's "Learning the Vi Editor", I learned. Four years later (and that's young for a Vim user), I'll never look back.
Point being: you can't learn via a cheat sheet. Dive into Vim, starting from the basics.