If you’re a text editing, Terminal surfing kind of computer user, you probably find the venerable text editor Vim to be fascinating. Either because you’re a whiz at it and fully understand it, or because you’re like me and have spent years listening to the cool kids talk about it.

I’ve gotten good enough with it to understand the appeal for hardcore fans, but never good enough to feel as comfortable as I do in other editors. I’ve been through a dozen tutorials and have numerous cheat sheets, but have been looking for a really good guide to dig into.

Painless Vim is one of those really good guides. It’s written from a very human perspective by Nate Dickson, who’s basically documented the frustrations and victories of learning Vim. To quote him:

…my quasi newbie status is part of why I’m writing this book right now. I’ve spent the last few months combing blogs and websites, buying or borrowing books on vim and grabbing onto the arm of anyone I know who uses vim and begging them to help me fix whatever mess I’ve most recently gotten myself into. Now that I’m fairly comfortable, I’d like to pass what I’ve learned along to ease the learning curve for everyone else.

Sounds very familiar.

The book is on Leanpub, which I love because it means once you buy a copy, you’ll continue to get free updates for as long as the author is revising and updating, and you can offer feedback and be part of the process. Painless Vim is currently in “beta” status and will continue to grow and receive polish. All of the chapters are there, and the amount of useful information for getting over the initial Vim learning curve is great.

So here’s the deal. I have five codes to give away. Each code gets you access to Epub and PDF formats with free updates for the lifespan of the “development cycle.” Enter below with your full name and email address. The giveaway is open to everybody, so jump on in! Winners will be randomly selected on Tuesday, May 13 at 12pm CST.

If you want to go ahead and get your hands on a copy (and support an independent author), Leanpub has a flexible pricing scheme. The suggested price is $14.99 or higher with a minimum of $5.99.

Sorry, this giveaway has ended.