DEV Community

Cover image for Things I noticed after using Vim for the first time in one week
Kayode
Kayode

Posted on • Originally published at blog.zt4ff.dev

Things I noticed after using Vim for the first time in one week

Disclaimer: This is my first time using Vim (actually Neovim 😎), so by no means am I an expert.
Come on it took me a couple of hours before I could configure a language server protocol! 😢
I look forward to your comments and advice on how to work better with and learn Vim.

This article was really helpful while configuring Neovim on my machine.

Vim is basically a text editor for Unix. It's similar to other programs like Notepad, Visual Studio Code, Sublime Text Editor or Atom.

So what led me to Vim

I love new challenges and improving my productivity. VS code was pretty customized and suitable for my current needs. Maybe YouTube videos from this guy (DistroTube) was the motivation to try it out.

Let's get right to my few observations

  • Efficiency: Vim is designed to reduce how often switch from your keyboard to a mouse. They are literally keybinding for any type of operation and you can create custom keybindings too. If you type really fast, this will improve your productivity as you will really need your mouse.
  • Learning Curve: Vim has quite a learning curve if you're just starting. For the first few days, my focus was shifted majorly from the code I write to the tool I use. This is going to pay off later by building up muscle memory you will be able to exit Vim in your sleep.

A quick meme about exiting vim:

exit_vim.png

Conclusion

I will continue sharing my learning experience and journey with Vim for the next few months

Whatever editor, language or framework you use, they should be able to solve your problems effectively and efficiently.
If you want to get started with Vim, I recommend starting with Neovim and it's simpler and maintained.
Do you think it is worth the time to learn Vim?

Top comments (1)

Collapse
 
arpple profile image
Arpple

vim style editing is totally worth the time to learn. it save a lot of time and have some consistency that easier to remember than VS shortcut.
Though I myself never actually use vim. I start with just vim plugin in VS code so you don’t need to figure out new thing and can just turn off to go back in urgent time.
Now my favorite editor is emacs (doom-emacs) as it extend your ability to navigate around project and tools with just keyboard aside from only editing text.