
VIM Plugins That Greatly Increase my Productivity - joelhooks
http://joelhooks.com/blog/2013/04/23/5-essential-vim-plugins/
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johncoltrane
Weird, if one's job is not plugin tester for nettuts I have a hard time
imagining how Vundle could increase one's productivity. Installing and
updating plugins is not something we do multiple times everyday. At worst, we
do that every two months and it takes 5 (or 10, if we take the time to RTFM)
minutes max…

> One of the first walls I hit was “how the heck do I navigate files in a
> project?”

Simple, just use __or :Ex. Netrw, which provides the :Ex[plore] command, is a
file explorer with a hell of a lot more features than NERDTree (browsing
remote machines, for example) and _comes with Vim_. There's no need to install
anything unless you really want something that is not in netrw. :h netrw

I second CtrlP. I love it. And both Syntastic and EasyMotion are pretty
useful. Those plugins are worth checking if they solve a problem you have;
otherwise don't bother.

But all those blog posts, always listing more or less the same plugins, may
inadvertently make new/non Vim users believe that it's impossible to open
files efficiently or do this or that with bare Vim which is rather unfortunate
and… blatantly false.

Most of the time it's hard to say if the author knows about Vim's built-in
navigation methods and decided to use a plugin instead or if he never took the
time to learn them and just went with the most popular plugin out of ignorance
and laziness. Like… if half the message was missing.

~~~
joelhooks
Vundle makes me for productive because I use my .vimrc across several
machines. I also had some weird issue that went away with a :BundleUpdate. It
is essential simply for the fact that it tees up easy plugin management and is
a pre-requisite for the rest.

All of these plugins were installed to solve specific problem _I_ have with
Vim.

As a very new Vim user, it is comforting to know that some of the more
irritating aspects that are difficult to understand out of the box can be
removed. Thanks for the tip about `netrw`.

~~~
johncoltrane
I "manage my plugins" when I have nothing more productive to do and it never
takes more than 5 minutes. Vundle and its automatic management _may_ be seen
by its users as a productivity enhancer but the reality is that the
productivity gain is actually very small.

Vundle, Pathogen, VAM, etc. are very useful (I use Pathogen) but for other
things, orthogonal to productivity: keeping your `~/.vim/` tidy, simplifying
install/uninstall…

Unless you spent countless hours a day installing/uninstalling plugins, which
I hope is not the case.

Yes, we all install plugins to solve problems. What exactly are these problems
would also be useful to know when we read posts like this. In this specific
instance, opening a file or navigating the file system is something that can
be done very easily and quickly with built-in commands or built-in plugins:

    
    
        :e **/foo<Tab>
        :Ex
    

It just so happens that the vast majority of Vim-related blog posts are lists
of plugins dressed by enthusiastic semi-beginners (I know how it feels and I
don't criticize that feeling and the urge to share it) who often barely know
the basics. When helpless new users look around for information they only get
superficial stuff and the "Install NERDTree" mantra repeated over and over
while what they _need_ is authoritative information and useful tricks for
using vanilla Vim.

And yes, it may sound rude, but most of the problems of the world could be
avoided if people just RTFM.

I like the warning you added to the top of your article and congratulations
for dropping that bullshit Janus.

~~~
joelhooks
at first I was a little pissed about your comments, but on reflection
appreciate your "tough love" approach. ;)

My hope is that I can continue to write my thoughts and this plugins list will
get smaller. I'd love to advance and share that experience. Out of this list,
NERDTree will probably be the first to drop off, but it is very handy for lost
noobs.

------
trochette
Nice Article on VIM time savers.

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fakeer
Dear anyone, starting on Vim , please go through the article(which is very
good actually, I use 2 of them) but I really wouldn't suggest you to try these
or any plugin for that matter, in the very beginning. Rather just do the _vim_
vim.

I mean vim productivity is basic vim commands, movements, yank etc. Once you
can move and edit like a ninja (or even a baby ninja) inside a text file you
can go ahead and explore around.

BTW, no one is stopping you from trying plugins from the very beginning but it
just adds to the clutter and _unnecessarily_ elongates the initial learning
path.

~~~
joelhooks
I couldn't agree more, and I probably should have linked this previous
thing[1] I wrote. One of the biggest barriers I had to actually using VIM was
going nuts with the plugins.

[1] <http://joelhooks.com/blog/2013/04/09/getting-to-know-vim/>

