Why Vim keybindings?

27th June 2023

Vim/Vi is a sort of lingua franca for different editors/IDEs. It's available with Jetbrains, VSCode, XCode, Visual Studio, and Sublime Text. It's also installed on essentially every unix machine, so you can edit config files in SSH sessions easily. I switched to Vim keybindings when I saw how others were so efficient and effortless in their movement through a codebase.

I did attempt to use pure Vim, but it lacks many features such as autocomplete, a file tree, linting errors etc., without installing plugins and an extensive config setup. The main argument against Vim that I encounter is that programming is actually mostly thinking, and it's not that useful programming fast. My counter to that is, there are times when I know exactly what I'm doing, and I simply want to go fast. It's also the reason I took some time to learn how to touch type, and learned some commonly used Emmet shortcuts.

Summary

I think Vim keybindings excellent and that all developers should at least give it a try. You can use any editor/IDE as a convenient jacket for Vim. This way, should any superior editor exist in the future, you can change outfits easily.