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Sergey Kislyakov
Sergey Kislyakov

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Should I learn Vim (or its keybindings)?

I wonder does Vim really boosts up your productivity. My IDE has the keybindings so I wonder should I give it a shot or not.

Oldest comments (25)

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Jen Chan

I just started a job where I had to learn it a month ago. My boss recommended vim-adventures.com or something like that. tbh I never got past level 3 but that was everything I needed to know to be semi functional. I can really see the benefits being going to any computer and being able to code right away!

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Meghan (she/her)

If you want to edit text on the command line on Linux at any point I would go for it. If it doesn't pertain to anything you work on, I don't think there's really anything else you'd get out of it.

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Jason C. McDonald • Edited

I started learning vim a while back, and I've never regretted it. I can be so much more productive in it in the command line than I can w/ programs like nano. Sometimes it's even faster than my IDE for particularly complex changes.

That said, vim isn't for everyone. Try it and emacs both - they're quite different, but allow the same degree of uber-productivity once you master it - and then decide which one you like better and learn it. You won't be sorry!

(In case anyone wonders, I hate emacs personally...but I recognize that as my own preferences and way of thinking! I have never known anyone that liked both emacs and vim, but one can almost invariably master one or the other.)

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Jonathan Soifer • Edited

Hi,

Time to update this answer.

There is an emacs version called Spacemacs with a vim editing mode.

It’s a distribution aimed at those of us who love vi and its keybindings and the power of emacs as an “operating system”.

So #1: it is possible to like both. I see absolutely no reason why not.

And, based off of that, I don’t understand what you mean by “almost invariably”.

So #2: yes. You can master both. There is no evil demon that formats your HD if you try it.

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Alan Barr

I like vim keybindings because it helps me minimize moving my wrist and using the mouse a lot. Ran into some wrist pain and I rarely have issues now. I only use maybe 1/10 of the power of vim as it takes quite a bit of memory to remember everything it does.

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Dimitri Acosta • Edited

I've been using vim for almost a year now and even when I am not workin with vim I use a vim plugin form my other editors or IDE.

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Eljay-Adobe • Edited

I use Vim. I think it is great... for me.

Give it a try. If you like it, great. If it doesn't work for you, that's understandable.

You will want to take a quick look at this Tutorial.

I found this to be a helpful Cheat Sheet. (Hmm, although that one is lower resolution than the image I have. UPDATE: here is a higher resolution version.)

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Sergey Kislyakov

I'm using this cheatsheet for now. I already navigate and edit my code with Vim keybindings and I kinda like it.

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Eric J. Falgout

I'm a Vim fan boy but still have a lot to learn.

Vim is almost mandatory if you need to do alot of SSHing into cloud servers for editing files and such.

It is great if you have the time to learn it in depth.

It is not great if you cannot spare time to breaking your Flow to look up commands.

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Matt Hutchison

It's useful to have a more full-featured editor when having to work from the command line. If you don't work from the command line often (I do), or you're already comfortable with another tool, then it may not be worth it. If you do / want to, it's a good tool to have in the box. I never got the hang of emacs, but either one should serve someone in that boat well.

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Matt Hutchison

Addendum: I use the vim extension in vscode on a Mac and I love it because I barely have to touch a mouse. It is by no means mandatory in IDE-land though.

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Bob Coggeshall • Edited

I learned VI around 35 years ago. Yes, you will need to spend a little while becoming as productive in what ever editor you are currently using... Other editors have come and gone. It is still my personal choice and I am still learning new tricks to become more productive in it. I am very impressed it is still so popular to this day. sudo you're welcome.

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Eduardo Reyes

It really isn't about the keybindings, it's more about the modal editing. If you learn vim like a mindset it's gonna be much much better (the keybindings are a big part of vim though)