Alright, let me be honest right out the gate: I always thought Vim was just some arcane flex tool for terminal nerds.
You know — the kind ThePrimeagen uses at lightspeed while yelling "LET'S GO!" on stream. It looked cool. It sounded fast. But it also looked like a keyboard-induced migraine.
Still… I was curious. So I decided to see what the hype was all about.
First Impressions: What Even Is This?
Day 1 with Vim felt like:
"How do I quit?" "Why can't I type?" "Oh cool, I deleted the entire line again."
It was confusing. It was rigid. It felt like Vim was a gatekeeper, not a helper.
I legit thought,
"This is just a thing YouTubers use to feel cool."
And maybe it is — a little. But I kept going.
What Shifted for Me
Somewhere around day 3 or 4, I stopped trying to fight Vim.
I started noticing that:
- The modal editing wasn't stupid — it was intentional
- The weird keyboard shortcuts were actually muscle memory training
- I didn't need to reach for the mouse — at all
- I was slowly becoming… faster?
That's when I made a cheat sheet — because tabs, splits, buffers, visual modes, and motions were still bouncing around in my brain like uncompiled code.
My Cheat Sheet (Still Growing)
This helped me survive the learning curve.
📎 https://github.com/Zenoguy/Vim---For-Normal-PPL/blob/main/VimCheatSheet.pdf
A little example:
MODES
-----
Normal Mode : Esc -> Navigate & issue commands
Insert Mode : i, a -> Enter text
Visual Mode : v, V -> Select text (char/line/block)
Command-line : : -> Run commands like save, quit
It's a mix of:
- Navigation basics
- Buffer/tab/split management
- Yank/paste/undo/redo rituals
- My most-used search + replace tricks
Feel free to steal or remix it.
Where I'm At Now
I'm not a Vim god yet. I'm still figuring things out. I still reach for VSCode when i have some real work to get done.
But here's the thing:
I finally get why people stick with Vim.
- It's about intentional motion
- It's about speed you earn (not speed handed to you)
- It's about building habits that scale across editors and environments
What's Next?
I want to try some cool Vim plugins. Stuff that'll make the workflow a little more modern, a little more fun.
If you've got any: 👉 Drop them in the comments.
Also, if you've just started with Vim too — let me know how your journey's going. We can swap cheat sheets and pain points.
TL;DR
- I thought Vim was dumb
- It is — until you start understanding it
- Then it becomes surprisingly powerful
- And maybe… worth the hype?
Top comments (5)
I'm still using an IDE on the computer because of the multiple tools in one interface.
I learned VIm to do changes on servers. Vim, or Vi if you are not that lucky, is the most stable editor. I had nano wrangling configuration settings which took servers down. i never had that problem with Vim.
RIP bru,
when i justswtiched to linux for the first time and was using nano to write some configs, i deleted my sound driver Lol, probably messed some dnf and deleted some system drivers
Can you be more specific on the 'nano wrangling configuration settings which took servers down' part? I don't see that happening, unless you made a mistake in your commands. I'm not pro nano or pro vim, it just sounds like a 'my cousin had a laptop of brand x, and it broke out of nowhere, so brand x sucks' kind of statement.
Same for @zenoguy, probably even more so if you manage to delete drivers.
idr man ,i was starting out on linux and i was trying to setup my bluetooth with chatgpt, it cud have been a simple blacklist or disable but i didnt understand shit then so reinstalling ubuntu was an easier option lol
To tell you the truth I don't remember the exact command, but I used it in the most basic form. open a file, edit text and save it.
I don't know what I have done but for some reason not every edited line was saved. And this happened on two servers. So after two servers I just quit using the editor.
It is not out of the realm of possibilities I did something wrong.