Discussion on "Vim After A Month"

Collins Ruto · 2019-10-17T11:26:29.735Z

My Vim Journey I started learning vim in May this year. I wrote this article a month later on my phone while I was commuting upcountry. So bear with me as I was supposed to have released this a few months back. Why did I decide to give Vim a go? My ...

Collins Ruto This article interests me as I too use VSCode but some colleagues use VIM. I have a basic familiarity with VIM like you did but haven't turned it into a full IDE yet.

However, I can't help but ask, why didn't you just use VSCode's built-in terminal by pressing Ctrl+`? You can run tests, builds, and apps in there or do whatever else you want in the shell. Would you care to explain other benefits of Vim over VSCode? Thanks.

I really disliked VScode's inbuilt terminal. I loved running my tests in the terminal so I could have a full view of what was happening. I disliked the idea of having half code and half terminal on VScode - it really didn't impress me. Moreso, I loved splitting my terminal into different panes and tabs running different processes, the server, tests, redis, etc. VScode's terminal couldn't be of much help.

For comparison with other editors, Vim is an advanced text editor.

It is ubiquitous - it is installed everywhere. All Linux distros have vim installed and set as the default editor. I am sure you have met vim in unexpected places too :)
Vim is powerful. You can make complex edits quickly with advanced vim features such as macros, registers, command-repetition, autocompletion, text-objects, searching, filters, global substitution, etc. I know most text editors have some of these features, but Vim just takes it to a whole new level.
Vim's knowledge is transferable - you can use vim's keybindings on your normal command line, or with Unix' man or less commands
Vim is like a language. Once you start to master it, you start to think in it, which is awesome! Eg to delete 3 words, just type d3w! How cool is that :)
Vim is thoroughly documented. Forgot a command? Just type :help and you have all the documentation with easy search
Vim is fun! Once you learn it, it becomes super fun to use! These days I get into the zone as soon as I open my Vim editor, I just love it

Todd I hope that helps?

Search Hashnode

Vim After A Month

Responses(2)