You Should learn Vim⌗

But what I really meant to say is that you should learn neovim. I probably will write a blog explaining why I think neovim is better than vim, but for now lets just run with the assumption that it is.

Earlier this year I decided it was time to put on my big boy pants and learn vim. This was inspired primarily by ThePrimagen constantly emphasizing how impactful this was towards his journey into becoming a Senior Software Engineer at Netflix. While I was skeptical for many reasons, I decided to give it a shot. I’m glad I did.

My previous impressions of vim⌗

I used to view vim as an antiquated tool for old school developers who were too stubborn to learn new tools and “get with the times.” I also had a faulty belief that vim was basically just a massive circle jerk for snarky engineers with too much free time, and not enough motivation to actually create useful systems in the real world.

How wrong was I!

Why I think you should learn vim.⌗

My reasons for turning from one of the biggest vim “haters” to a mormon level of enthusiasm Evangelist for vim are many, but to summarize.

• Vim will make you write more code, faster
• Using vim “feels” more fun than using a mouse
  • Dopamine feedback cycles from learning a couple of shortcuts, and slowly building up a repertoire of shortcuts that make you more productive.
• You don’t have to giveup your favorite development environment
  • vscode-neovim allow you to combine the best of both worlds. Similar extensions exist for other envs.

Practical advice for getting started⌗

I can’t speak highly enough of ThePrimeagen’s vim tutorials. I definitely recommend checking these out as your starting point.

Beyond that consider the following

• Install a vim extension for your editor of choice
• Only learn a handful of shortcuts first
  • Take notes on a couple of shortcuts, and then spend an entire week using only those shortcuts.
  • Once they become muscle memory move on to the next set of shortcuts.