Setting Up VIM Proved To Be… Not Terrible

I remember years ago when learning Linux for the first time and some tutorial online I was following asked me to edit a config file for an application I was using at the time, the command probably looked a little something like:

vim .appNamerc

What followed this wonderful command was the text editor known as Vim or Vi Improved. I had no Idea the predicament I had gotten myself into, I tried to type the edits suggested by the tutorial but was met by a series of noises telling me that I could not type, I did some research and discovered that I needed to press I in order to enter insert mode. “Ok whatever” I thought to myself, I finished making the edits to the rc file and then tried to save the file. Having come from Windows instinctively I went for the file button, only to realise that this was the file button for the terminal, not the hellish nightmare of a text editor I had found myself within. I am almost positive the first time I used vim I did not manage to save the file and quit and ended up opening the file in another editor to save time.

Fast forward about 7 or 8 years and we are where I am today, with a few vim battles under my belt, I have since figured out how to save and quite and that was about it, until a month ago.

It was in the evening that I decided I was going to try and set vim up properly this time, so I spent some time doing research and found the best thing to do is follow vim tutor, a simple little program baked right into the editor. I followed the tutorial and found myself flying around the screen with little jumps and hops using h,j,k,l not long after I stumbled across plugins and managed to find a few that would help recreate the experience I was missing from a more full fledged code editor such as VSCode or Sublime Text.

In fact it really didn’t take much at all to get my .vimrc in working order, I am pretty happy with it and quite proud of myself. I now tend to drift towards it for most projects, especially on my unix machines which I tend to use for Web Development and more recently Programming. It has gotten to the point where I have uninstalled all other text editors in order to make learning the software something I have to do.

On to a slight pros and cons sequel section, I definitely enjoy the minimal experience of only running it in a terminal, no need for extra windows. The other major bonus of how lightweight it is, is of course the lack of harware requirements needed to run it, I can run it on a 16gb 2020 MacBook Pro, with 2–3 files open, a good amount of plugins and a browser and be sitting comfortably with 92% of my cpu idle, as for memory it barely touches the stuff, it’s usaully Docker and Atom (which I use for Julia dev with the Juno package) that eat away at my precious resources.

If you have any questions about the setup of Vim, what plugins I am using or any other general questions then feel free to ask.