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<title>penloy.xyz | Use Vim</title>
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<h1>Use Vim.</h1>
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<h2>But why use Vim?</h2>
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<p>
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There are lots of reasons to use vim. Vim is an entirely different paradigm to the standard text editor,
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and has an extremely high learning curve, probably the biggest learning curve of any text editor or IDE.
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Despite the high learning curve, thousands of vim users still repeat: Use vim! Why would all of these
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people recommend such a difficult text editor, are they masochists?
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</p>
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<p>
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Truth is, vim is extremely rewarding to learn, and once you get past that mountain of a learning curve,
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you start to realise that when you use vim, you can do things <b>much</b> faster than before. You can
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use the mouse in vim, but the mouse is a crutch, not something you'll use permanently; the mouse is only
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there to help you transition. The fully-integrated, butter smooth keyboard commands are what make vim
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great to use. You may be resistant to the idea, you may think "This is so much work just to use a text
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editor", but please trust me when I say it is worth it to stick with it.
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</p>
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<p>
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The advantages to using vim might not be obvious, but I'll list a few:
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</p>
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<ol>
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<li>Vim is platform independent, it can be used anywhere. It can be used on Linux, MacOS, Windows,
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iPadOS, iOS, Android. It can even be used in a VPS. Once vim is your preferred editor, you can open
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up your fully configured, fully integrated vim in your VPS. This means you can edit in your
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preferred environment and feel at home in your VPS!</li>
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<li>Vim is a fully configurable, modifiable text editor which can be transformed into an IDE-like
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experience with full syntax highlighting, error checking, debugging experience with terminal
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integration, file trees, you name it! Vim probably has it. I'll show an image of my fully configured
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neovim below this list, and I'll link to my neovim config at the bottom of this page.</li>
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<li>You can experience a boost in efficiency like no other. There are hundreds, maybe thousands of time
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savers that you can learn in vim. You can be really fast with just the basic few commands, but once
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you start combining those keystrokes into more complex variations on commands, you get to be
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extremely efficient and fast at editing text. It took weeks, even months for me to get where I am
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today, but I can say safely that I am much faster at editing in vim than I ever was editing in a
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regular IDE or text editor.</li>
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<li>Vim is <em>extremely</em> light weight and fast! It opens in less than half a second and runs in a
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terminal, meaning you don't even have to leave your terminal to enter vim. It's right there are your
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fingertips.</li>
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</ol>
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<img src="/images/neovim.png">
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<h2>But how do I learn vim?</h2>
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<p>
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First of all, I recommend just using neovim right out of the gate. Vim stands for vi improved, and vi is
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the predecessor to vim. Neovim is to vim like vim is to vi. Neovim has many improvements and QOL changes
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to vim that just make life better and easier.
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</p>
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<p>
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If you're now convinced you want to learn vim, I will provide a list of resources for you to be able to
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learn vim below.
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</p>
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<ul>
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<li><a href="https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8ENHE5xdFSwx71u3fDH5Xw">ThePrimagen</a> is an entire
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YouTube channel dedicated to helping people learn vim. Not only is it a great resource for learning
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vim, but his videos are extremely entertaining and he also does livestreams. <a
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href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3o4l4GVLW0">Vim as your editor</a> is a great series of
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his to checkout for everyone, even if you're already experienced with vim. <a
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href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ICU9OEsNiRA">Vim life</a> is an older series but still
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quite new and definitely worth checking out!</li>
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<li><a href="https://neovim.io/doc/">The neovim documentation</a> contains helpful docs if you just want
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to get right into the meat of things.</li>
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<li><a href="https://gitlab.com/Penloy/nvim-config">My neovim config</a> of course is available. A
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general rule of thumb though is that if you don't know what something in someone elses vim config
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does, don't put it in your config. It might make things very confusing if something non-standard in
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my config conflicts with information someone else tells you about how vim works.</li>
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<li><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wlR5gYd6um0">Vim as a language </a>is part of a vim
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conference and it talks about the fundamentals of vim as a language. It's super insightful into how
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vim works and it's definitely worth checking out.</li>
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</ul>
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<p>
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So what are you waiting for? Go install vim!
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</p>
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