

To vim or not to vim - gnosis
http://blog.reneaguirre.net/2009/05/to-vim-or-not-to-vim.html

======
jrockway
There is also this thing called Emacs. I clicked through to the SciTE
screenshot, and noticed that Emacs can do all that cool stuff... while still
being very flexible, like vim.

(Actually, I would not call vim flexible, but I am more of an editor
programmer than an editor user.)

------
Osmose
I'm curious: Is it really worth it to learn vim for the productivity?

I've used vim as far as simple search, visual mode, and copy/paste. One of the
things I've noticed when attempting to learn more vim is that when using other
editors I use the time it takes to scroll or navigate to think about what I'm
doing or what to work on next. From that (possibly naive) perspective, the
effort to learn vim seems less necessary. Am I the only one who thinks this
way?

Note: I make an exception for regex search and replace as an amazing power
feature, but the GUI editor I use most of the time can do that anyway
(Notepad++). Also now I'm really interested by snippets after having looked
them up.

~~~
gnosis
If all you use an editor for is searching, copying, pasting, and typing simple
documents, then a simpler editor than vim would probably suffice.

But if you use an editor for programming or composing more complex documents
(such as LaTeX articles/books), then learning vim could save you a lot of
time.

vim is also handy for editing lots of small, simple documents scattered all
over a filesystem and on many different machines (tasks that system
administrators have to do quite frequently).

Take a look through vim.org's script repository for just a small inkling of
what vim could do.

[http://www.vim.org/scripts/script_search_results.php?order_b...](http://www.vim.org/scripts/script_search_results.php?order_by=rating)

This list of "best vim tips" should also give you a taste:

<http://vim.wikia.com/wiki/Best_Vim_Tips>

~~~
aaronblohowiak
i use vim because using the mouse hurts. this replaces the time required for
moving my hands from kb to mouse and back with time spent noodling around in
vimtutor and googling vim commands ;)

------
RevRal
Vim is actually next my list of productivity tools to learn -- I just got done
learning the Colemak keyboard layout.

How painful can I expect this experience to be? Vim doesn't seem fun at all.

~~~
mdemare
Every symbol and every letter (upper- and lowercase) on your keyboard has a
specific meaning. Spend an hour trying out what all (80 or so) do - that's
fun!

Then do some actual editing and try to navigate as efficiently as possible -
make it a sport. Try to use as many different commands as possible.

There are some two letter commands (e.g. ZZ, gg, zt) but not that much. There
are some CTRL-key commands, but few important ones. And there are tons of
command-mode functions (e.g. substitution), but there are few that you really
need to know.

~~~
graywh
Only "some" 2-letter commands? Try looking through ':help z' and ':help g'.

Ctrl-key commands become really important in insert and command-line modes.

And not to nitpick, but when you speak of "command-mode functions (e.g.
substitution)", I think you really mean command-line mode. Command mode is
another name for normal mode. Please try not to confuse the new/prospective
users.

------
far33d
The author mentions snipMate, the vim plugin for snippets. I've started to
really embrace this plugin and it has made programming much more pleasant,
since I only type the stuff that matters and none of the scaffold (especially
in HTML)

------
buugs
The author seems to be in a windows environment and would probably benefit
from like etexteditor which is pretty good, the thing about windows is that it
seems really hard to use vim in as I'm used to going to a directory or using
autocomplete to chose files from like say

    
    
        vim ~/git/con\t
    

and getting

    
    
        vim ~/git/configs/
    

and so on. Which seems to work much better in a nix environment.

Personally I use emacs most of the time though vim does work well for quick
edits.

~~~
mhansen
Works fine for me on Windows. Make sure you have

    
    
        set wildmode=list:longest
    

in your ~/.vimrc

------
defdac
I would like to read the story of an IntelliJ/Eclipse-user going to Vim/Emacs.

------
thisduck
to vim.

