You're using Vim Wrong - Relative Line Numbers

Arthur Zhuk — Wed, 28 Oct 2020 16:12:16 +0000

Learning Vim starts off as a daunting task. Setting up your colors, tab key to spaces, space count, configuring your linter, and on and on to infinity. These are all important steps in your journey to learning vim. Just make sure you don't overlook Relative Line Numbers.

The relative line numbers setting allows you to jump exactly where you want without having to do a mental addition or subtraction. The strategy is to look at the line number column, jump to the line you want to edit using a command like 10k, jump to the part of the line you want to change, and perform the edit.

This defeats having to look at the line number column and for example, calculate the difference between 16 and 9 in your head then execute the 7k command to jump there. For those who aren't using Vim, it completely blows bashing your arrow keys like you're playing snake to get the location you want to edit.

The beautiful thing with learning more Vim mechanics is it compounds with the rest of the efficiencies you pick up throughout your programming journey. As it becomes deeper ingrained in your muscle memory you are able to chop up your code in every which way with ease. You experience less fatigue from typing and have more energy to organize and refactor your rough draft implementations.

Do you use relative line numbers when you use Vim? Do you know of a more effective way to write code that allows for more lines of code written for the effort you exert? Let me know!

DEV Community: Arthur Zhuk

You're using Vim Wrong - Relative Line Numbers