vim-notes.md

VIM!

Why Vim (or more accurately why vi)

• Give those fingers a rest
  • vi allows you to stay on the home row for a lot of the time which is nice. No contorting your fingers
• Get stuff done faster
• SSH
• Have more fun editing text

Vi is great! Vim is...ok

• The lesson of vi and the lesson of emacs Why atom can't replace vim
• There's nothing quite like the composability of vi and modal editing
• vim works fine as an editor, terminal vim lets you work right from the console but you do sacrifice some GUI niceties, and people will like pairing with you less--vi emulation in modern editors can give you the best of both worlds.

How to learn vi

• Use sensible defaults to start (or forever)
  • remap escape. Do it! You'll thank me. echo imap jk <esc> > .vimrc
• Do vimtutor
• Pick up things gradually
  • maybe add one new thing every week--see where it makes you more efficient
  • don't throw away what you already use--gradually become more efficient
• If you wanna jump in the deep end, do it on a side project so you can really have fun with it
• Have fun!

Use sensible defaults

From easiest to hardest:

• Use an editor with a vi mode
  • RubyMine is great: has a lot of nice IDE features if you like that sort of thing, and IdeaVim their vim emulator is great and allows you to use your vim customizations file (vimrc) right out of the box which is really nice.
  • Visual Studio Code: Seems like it has customizability and a good vi mode as well that seems well supported
• If using vim use janus
• Use neovim and take a peek at someone else's vimrc
• Use spacemacs!
  • Spacemacs!: Seeks to combine the best of vim and emacs through an emacs distribution that's focused on evil mode (vi mode)

Resources

• Everyone Who Tried to Convince Me to use Vim was Wrong
• Why atom can't replace vim
  • about the lesson of emacs (extensibility) and the lesson of vi (composability)
• Your problem with Vim is that you don't grok vi
  • Another post that gets into more specifics about the composability idea
• janus vim distribution
  • A great starting place for using vim (as opposed to vi bindings)