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Cover image for VIM: This Is How A Love-Hate Relationship Became A Real Bond

VIM: This Is How A Love-Hate Relationship Became A Real Bond

Volker Schukai on June 06, 2022

Why am I writing this down? Maybe you are one of those crazy people who are contemplating using vim more often, and you might find some helpful tho...
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Volodymyr Yepishev

I will never forget the first time I opened vim and had no idea how to exit it :)

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Richard Guay

I was very effecient at killing a process because of this!

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abnessor aka findoff

First nth times i exiting by C^Z ^M kill %1, then i loved it and now we've been together for 10 years...

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Volker Schukai

yes, that's really bad.

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Tawhid

I appreciate Vim but nano is awesome too

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Tawhid

It's generally faster.Like: to save, exit, search etc all just combination of two keys or a shortcut,
on the othrer hand Vim needs i to edit wq save and so on.Generally speaking I need to press few keys compared to Vim and since I'm lazy I'm into it

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Volker Schukai

I've never really used nano. Is there a killer feature you like best about nano?

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Paweł Świątkowski

Most people mention "not being vim" as a killer feature of nano. I don't buy it ;)

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Volker Schukai

:-)

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Valentin Nechayev

Nano is ugly, compared to joe. The only excuse for nano is its tininess.

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Valentin Nechayev • Edited

For the current programming I get vim featured for:

  1. set list and similar features to detect where predecessors spoiled the source code (tabs, hanging spaces, etc.) (At the current project, to my great pity, forced code formatters aren't exploited.)
  2. Ease to convert between formats and encodings.
  3. Better UX of simple search than for any IDE I've seen so far.
  4. Ease of comparing code chunks when manual merge is needed (after e.g. git cherry-pick, etc.)

OTOH I'm too lazy to convert vim to IDE. Maybe I should finally assign some time for it :) but now I'm switching between IDE (Intellij family or VSCode) and vim.

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Volker Schukai

thanks for sharing

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Chris Greening

After several embarrassing failed attempt at writing some code in a remote terminal I forced myself to use only vim for about a week

It didn't become my primary editor but I can at least function effectively in terminal-only environments now, definitely worth the small learning investment

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Volker Schukai

Learning something is never wasted time. :-)

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Richard Guay

You can read my vim journey here. I’m not perfect still, but I do love vim now. I use the LunarVim config which is very nice. The book Master Vim quickly is my favorite book on vim.

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Volker Schukai

Thanks for the links and insights, I will read through this when the time comes.

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Thomas H Jones II

Sounds like you haven't discovered the joy of EMACS. If you truly want to foray into the more Kafkaesque corners of the Twilight Zone, EMACS is the go-to choice of editors.

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Volker Schukai

While writing this article I was wondering when the first comment on emacs would come. The emacs vs vim wars are legendary.

But all joking aside, I have had emacs on maybe 3 to 5 times in my life and looked at it for a total of 5 minutes. so far I have had no contact with it. You seem to have more experience.

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Thomas H Jones II

Been using vi and variants since the late 80s. Mostly settled on vi because it was just "always there" …and, even if vi wasn't (usually because a machine was in single-user mode due to failing to fsck the partition containing the dynamically-linked tools), ex was (which has the same command-set and the same standard-regex that most other UNIX and Linux tools use).

Most of my EMACS encounters were in the 1990s and early 2000s. It seemed to be the preferred-editor for programmers during that period. Haven't really run into anyone using it in the last 15+ years, though – probably as much because everyone that didn't stay with vi (which now seems to be primarily the domain of sys-admins) switched to IDEs.

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Volker Schukai

That's interesting, thanks for the insights.

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Andres 🐍 in 🇨🇦

after 1 month using github.com/dusans/vim-hardmode

your vim-fu will be more faster than your vscode-fu!

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Volker Schukai

That's the torture method, isn't it? :-)
But I understand what you mean.

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Andrew Baisden

I want to get better with VIM 😂

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Henrique Ramos

That feeling when you discover a Vim feature because you typed a key and were in normal mode

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KyleReemaN

why you dont use a plugin to use vim with your ide? =)

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Volker Schukai

Actually i have ideavim in use. I can't tell what it is, but somehow it doesn't feel good.

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KyleReemaN

hmm i also use ideavim you have to do some config stuff but way better than coding without vim imho

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Maung Maung Oo

I hated vim and now I am loving it. It was a weird journey.

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Volker Schukai

thank you for your comment. i think that's how many people feel when they embark on this journey.

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Erdal Turan • Edited

Nowadays I can't write something any online platform because they platform doesn't support vim keybinding :( I hope one day every web platform will supporting vim.

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Volker Schukai

I think that will remain a dream.

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Volker Schukai

I know this. I try to use vim shortcuts in many applications. For example vimium for chrome.

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eomiso

When you love vim so much you end up fixing your keymap to a happyhacking keymap LOL