Why does

VIM

still exist in 2022?

VIM is 30 years old

and still going strong...

Stack Overflow Survey

Consistently in the top 5 developer environments used by devs in the past 5 years

Stack Overflow

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/11828270/how-do-i-exit-the-vim-editor

has been viewed 2.6m times

Features of VIM

  • Available everywhere
  • Powerful customizations
  • Keyboard centric
  • Flexible command system

Then

Now

The problem with traditional text editors

  • Navigation optimised for typing documents
  • Relies heavily on the GUI
  • But it was "good enough"

Fun facts about QWERTY

  • First appeared in 1874
  • QWERTY layouts were developed as a means to slow typists down
  • But it was "good enough"

DVORAK layout

  • Introduced in 1936
  • More intuitive and efficient than QWERTY
  • But never really caught on

All of this breaks flow

even if just a little

Vi was born

Key idea #1: Modal text editing

Separates navigation from editing

  • Allows us to repurpose the home row
  • More flexibility to work with the text

Key idea #2: Text objects

Text primitives suited for code

  • Words, lines and paragraphs
  • Delimiters or enclosing tags
  • Pages

Key idea #3: Melody

Compose commands infinitely

All of this allows you to stay close to the home row

Keeps you in the flow

Other great ideas

  • Highly configurable
  • Programmable
  • Close to the terminal

How can I get started?

VSCode has a plugin!
https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=vscodevim.vim

How to do VIM right

Rule #1

Stay close to the home row

  • Arrow keys are bad
  • Backspace is bad
  • ESC is bad

Rule #2

Avoid using the mouse

  • It's easier to navigate with the keyboard
  • Your hands are away from the keyboard, bad

Rule #3

Avoid repeating keys, compose

  • Saves keystrokes
  • Slower

Thank you for listening

Questions?

Learning

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