Vim is perfect for all kinds of text editing, to coding, to editing configuration files.
If you spend any amount of time on the command line, the thought of moving your fingers to your mouse and hovering over a drop-down menu just to perform a simple edit is likely enough to make you lose your lunch.
Vim is a powerful text editor designed for use both from a keyboard and from a terminal. Many programmers prefer working with Vim than with their mouse due to the efficiency gained in typing commands with a keyboard, but this is not the only reason to use it.
Why Learn Vim?
The best text editors allow you to enjoy programming and interact with code in a way that makes you feel like a developer, not a mindless robot. Vim is one of the best editors to offer this experience, which is why I’m here to give you 4 reasons why you should consider it as your next editor.
So why learn vim? It's free and runs on most operating systems. It has keybindings that let you navigate and edit text easily. You can use it to edit code, which is the main reason I started using vim.
1: It's Powerful ⚡
Vim can do anything from jump around your code to reformatting it, running unit tests, and more all with a few keystrokes.
So why vim?
- Because it will make you faster;
- Because it will make you more efficient;
- Because it will enable you to do things you couldn’t do before.
Vim is immensely powerful, and the first time I tried it I was blown away at everything you could do without leaving the keyboard.
2: It's everywhere.
Vim runs, almost anywhere. See: Vim on Windows, Vim on Mac OS X, Vim on Linux, Vim on Android, and Vim on iOS.
Vim is built into most Linux distributions and Mac OS X, installed by default in many places (but not always). So, even if you're stuck with a crappy computer that doesn't come with it, you can still get it. Good luck trying to get Emacs installed on your netbook, though—I bet that's possible, but I don't know how to do it.
Even if you don't have it installed already, you can install Vim in an evening using Homebrew or apt-get or whatever the cool kids use these days for package management.
It even runs inside Visual Studio Code and all the Jetbrains IDEs. You can use it in the terminal too. Basically, it's everywhere on any system.
3: Keyboard shortcuts for everything
Vim is an editor that does everything through keyboard shortcuts, so once you learn how to do a lot of things, you can move very quickly through your code
4: Vim has a great community
Vim has a great community, and I've found that people who are nice in real life are usually nice in the online Vim community, too
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