The Top 5 Reasons I Switched to Vim

Ive been a happy Vim user for a very long time. Ive used it at work, in university. I'm glad I did. In this post, I'll list the top five reasons why I've become an avid vim user.

Before that, I used some regular editors like nano and mc. When I found that many people were using vim, I decided to give it a try.

1: Vim is everywhere

I can instantly switch between all my operating systems (OSX, Linux and Windows) without having to change anything. Even when logging in over an SSH connection to remote computers.

It's what I use for everything. I edited almost all of my code with it, config files and more.

2: Vim has been around for a long time

Some editors come and go. It's good to have one workflow that you can stick with over the years, without having to learn new shortcuts every time the latest shiny IDE comes out.

If you are new to vim, I suggest these exercises

3: Vim is fast

One of the things that annoys me is slow IDE's. You start the IDE and you can grab a coffee. Vim on the other hand, start immediately. And if you must use a slow IDE, a vim plugin is always available.

Over the years I've used various IDEs for work, and one thing that annoyed me was the daily start up speed in Eclipse, Netbeans and others.

4: Record and replay keystrokes

This is such a time save. Vim lets you record your keystrokes using qh. Stop recording with q and replay with @h. If you ever need to edit 100 lines at once, this saves so much time.

5: Simple interface

Looking for some overly feature-filled program with an intimidating interface? Me neither. Vim always has the same keystrokes and gets out of your way once you learn it.

The awesome thing is that vim is everywhere if you want, even in your web browser (Vimium), the terminal, the GUI (gvim) and inside IDEs.