Changing text

By default you're in Vim's normal mode, meaning that every key press corresponds to a particular command. Hit i on your keyboard to enter an insert mode. This will display -- INSERT -- in a status line (at the bottom), (and, if you're using gVim, it will change the cursor from a block to a vertical line), as can be seen in the following example:

The insert mode behaves just like any other modeless editor. Normally, we wouldn't spend a lot of time in insert mode except for adding new text.

Let's create our Python application by typing in the following code. We'll be navigating this little snippet throughout this chapter:

To get back to normal mode in Vim, hit Esc on your keyboard. You'll see that -- INSERT -- has disappeared from the status line. Now, Vim is ready to take commands from you again!