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Sean Aubin
Sean Aubin

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Levelling Up Vscode text editing shortcuts?

Summary

If you're an intermediate developer happy with basic Vscode functionality, where does one look for non-default keyboard shortcuts for text editing? Where should I look for inspiration?

Background

Around twice a year I contemplate learning more text editing shortcuts. Usually, this is triggered by:

  • People documenting their journey through various editors, such as Tristan Hume.
  • People I admire (Gary Bernhardt, Andrew Kelley) using alternative editors (Vim, Emacs, Spacemacs... etc.) effectively in demos
  • New editors, such as Onivim2, promising the power of Vim with the usability of Vscode.

Currently, I'm happily using Visual Studio Code to develop Python and have no desire to switch to a terminal-based editor. I like:

  • Pretty menus
  • Being able to click on things
  • Minimizing time spent configuring/tweaking

However, I'd like to upgrade my text-editing keyboard-shortcuts slightly to enable functionality like:

  • Deleting the previous/next word
  • Cut a whole function definition for pasting someplace else
  • Other functions I haven't thought of?

I've looked into various Vscode plugins, such as Vscode Spacemacs, but they intimidate me with their breadth of functionality. I've also failed on three separate occasions to learn Vim, so I'm hesitant to enable Vim keybindings.

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