Why I Want to Become a Vimmer

I think every programmer has the dream of being able to use Vim smoothly (this might just be my personal belief). The reason Vim started to look so cool to me is because I began watching a YouTube channel called devaslife, where the person operates everything using just the keyboard, and I thought it was really cool.

In addition to him, there’s another tech influencer from the channel theprimeagen, and he also uses Vim like a pro, which I thought was really cool.

Moreover, there’s bawad, known among programmer geeks, and he is also a hardcore Vimmer. Watching him move the cursor so swiftly made me think it was really cool.

I feel like an elementary school kid admiring YouTubers, and I apologize for turning this into a YouTuber introduction corner 🙇‍♂️

Myself So Far

I started using VSCode in 2017, so I got used to operating with a mouse, and I couldn’t switch to Vim or Emacs right away. There are several reasons for that:

• Vim doesn’t work just by installing it, like VSCode (well, it works, but not as an IDE).
• You have to learn how to use it (obviously).
  • I tried a Neovim tutorial at first, but if you don’t use it daily, you’ll forget it.
• The extensions I frequently use in VSCode aren’t always available in Vim.
• Choosing a terminal can be difficult.
  • This might vary depending on personal preference, but there were times when the terminal didn’t get along well with Vim, causing display issues, which led to me giving up a few times.

Things I Tried to Become a Vimmer

Tried Installing the Vim Binding Plugin for VSCode

I gave up on this because there were times when I couldn’t input Japanese correctly, and there were many bugs, like not knowing which cursor mode I was in.

Tried Installing the VSCode Neovim Plugin

This extension seems to run based on the Vim installed on the machine, so it mostly works fine, but sometimes it conflicted with VSCode-specific shortcuts. Each time, I had to disable keys in the settings file, which was a hassle. VSCode also felt sluggish, and there were occasional bugs like the clipboard not being shared. The most critical issue was that some Neovim plugins were incompatible, and it ended up feeling like a half-baked mix of VSCode and Vim, leaving me frustrated.

Tried Installing AstroVim, Which is Kind of Like a Superset of Vim

Instead of installing Vim and configuring everything myself, this came pre-loaded with commonly used plugins, so it was really convenient. However, I couldn’t figure out how to use those plugins, and I got so frustrated that I gave up (I give up quickly 😪).

AstroNvim

An aesthetically pleasing and feature-rich neovim config that is extensible and easy to use with a great set of plugins

astronvim.com

Final Conclusion

Using the Zed Editor in Vim Mode

Zed - The editor for what's next

Zed is a high-performance, multiplayer code editor from the creators of Atom and Tree-sitter.

zed.dev

Why Zed?

• Zed is an open-source editor written in Rust, developed by the creators of Atom (which has since been discontinued).
• The shortcuts are similar to VSCode, so there aren’t many times when I get stuck because I don’t know the keys.
• It runs very fast, and the startup time is overwhelmingly quick.
• You can enable Vim mode without needing an extension.

However, since it’s still somewhat underdeveloped, it does feel a bit quirky, but not enough to be bothersome. The updates seem very frequent, so I believe it will get better eventually.

Using Vimium, a Chrome Extension

Chrome Web Store

chromewebstore.google.com

The purpose of this is to overcome the problem of forgetting Vim commands after doing the tutorials I mentioned earlier. Since I spend more time browsing than writing code, I figured that if I get used to cursor movements in the browser, moving the cursor in an editor won’t be as difficult (and it actually wasn’t). It’s also very easy to use.

However, the only problem for me was that I use the Arc browser for work, and there were slight differences in behavior from Chrome, like overlapping shortcuts or features, which made it a bit inconvenient at times, but it was manageable.

And that’s my journey to becoming a Vimmer.