Tim, the Enchanter

A good friend of mine posted an article that finally inspired me to learn another editor (even though I was, and still am, quite happy with TextMate).

What resulted was a direct vertical climb up the the learning curve of VIM:

And, painful it was! There were times when I felt obligated to keep using it, even though I longed for the simpicity of TextEdit or TextMate. Why did I do it? Well, when I learned how to chain commands together I was addicted! And then there was finding out that VIM does all the things I’ve wanted an editor to do for a long time.

A few of the features I love:

• Ability to chain commands together (d3w, di”, c/Word, g~e etc)
• Visual block mode
• VIM plugins
• Complete from words in doc
• Lots of navigation keys to get you precisely where you want to be in less than 3 key strokes
• VIM follows me everywhere – Desktop, terminal, linux, unix, windows, OS X)
• Multiple registers (clipboards)
• Macros
• The ”.” key (repeat last edit)
• Many more

I now really fancy this old-timer VIM, and as my friend described, I can shovel around text by the shovel-full. It’s an amazing feeling! I still feel all warm inside and excited when I go to edit a bunch of text and get to hop around, move stuff around, make spelling corrections, all without moving my hands off the middle of the keyboard!

posted by Tim Harper  # 10:00 PM