vim and productivity
You cringed, didn’t you? It’s certainly given. I won’t mind if you did cringe reading the title of this post. This is yet another post on the internet telling people why vim is awesome.
In my career as a software developer so far, I’ve mostly used vim as a code editor. But it was not until recently that I realized that I’ve been underutilizing it.
I, like everybody else, am going through a mid-career crisis right now, asking myself as to where exactly I am headed. A small step in the journey of self-discovery was introspecting my productivity. So there! I rediscovered vim.
Through this medium, I’d like to share my learning and my vim configuration in a hope that it might help others treading the same path.
vim basics
My earlier usage of vim was pretty basic. open a file
vim <filname>
Edit file in the insert mode. Never used, movement, replace, change commands. Used visual mode for copy-paste
v, y, p, u
close the editor
:wq!
That’s it. I wasn’t kidding about underutilization!
I found this great resource to get the basics through right away. I have based my .vimrc after the recommendations from the below lecture from MIT. I didn’t feel the need to repeat the material in the post below here. Please go through the lecture and come back to check out my editor.
mit-lecture
My vim configuration
I’ve made my own .vimrc based on my project needs.
myvim
You will find my current .vimrc in the above branch. I needed source tree file explorer, fuzzy file finder, autocompletion, auto-compile, and a pleasant-looking color scheme. I’ve been able to supplement these needs with the help of vim plugins. I’ve shared short video demos of how my editor looks below.
source tree explorer - NerdTree
fuzzy file finder - CtrlP
autocompletion and auto-compile
I wish to explore more of this world, one command at a time, and one plugin at a time. Do comment and let me know what you think about the vim configuration. Suggest some good plugins too. I am looking forward to trying out fugitive in the near future. Happy hacking :)