Improving your Productivity with VIM (+ VS Code Shortcuts)

#beginners #learning #vim

When my peers see me writing code they think I'm possessed by some kind of dark forze which drives me to use a series of strange shortcuts for them. The reality is that, with practice, I have gained a great ability to put the mouse aside.

But, to be honest, the path was hard. The vas majority Vim's gurus uses such a great amount of shortcuts, macros, and patterns that shocked me out.

The Basics

That's the entry point of this post, bring you a series of most common shortcurts that I use in my day to day as a web dev. Furthermore, there are also great shortcuts for VS Code that will take you to the next level.

Modes

i -> For normal mode. In this mode you can insert text before the cursor.
esc -> Exit insert mode. A fat cursor appears and you will able to move throught the document.
Ctrl+v -> Start visual mode (lines).
Ctrl+V -> Start visual mode (blocks).

Movement

h -> Left
j -> Down
k -> Up
l -> Right
0 -> Jump to the start of the line
$ -> Jump to the end of the line
G -> Go to the last line of the document
zz -> Go to the first line of the document

Exiting

:q! -> Quit and throw away unsaved changes.
:wq -> Write (save) and quit.

Most used shortcuts (for me)

Insert text

I -> Insert at the beginning of the line.
A -> Insert (append) at the end of the line.
o -> Append (open) a new line below the current line.
O -> Append (open) a new line above the current line.
gd -> Go to a definition (variable, function...).
gf -> Go to a specifil file.

Editing

r -> Replace a single character.
x -> Delete characters.
u -> Undo
Ctrl+r -> Redo
ciw -> Replace the entire word.
cc -> Replace the entire line

Cut and paste

yy -> Copy a line.
2yy -> Copy two lines.
p -> Paste after cursor.
P -> Paste before cursor.
dd -> Delete a line
d$ -> Delete to the end of the line.
dw -> Delete the characters of the word from the cursor position to the start of the next word.

Pro commands

line-number + G -> Go to this line.
/search-term -> Search inside the code. Move witch n.
% -> Move to matching character ({}, []).
:/s/text-to-change/new-text/gc -> Replaces the indicated text with the new one throughout the document.