This post is about adding one long‑term efficiency skill to your toolkit: using Vim motions in your editor instead of living in mouse land.
Watch on YouTube
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- 2:04 - How to get started with VIM.
- 2:44 - Insert Mode. (make vim act like nano)
- 3:40 - Getting back to normal
- 4:09 - Console Mode
- 5:00 - Quitting VIM
- 6:10 - Quickly change the text inside quotes
- 7:15 - Saving your changes.
Introduction
The motivation to write this article is to encourage you to add an efficiency skill to your skill set that will benefit you throughout your entire career as a developer. Let’s set a scene to get started.
Imagine a pleasant Sunday afternoon at home and you are trying to help someone in your family be more efficient by encouraging them to learn how to “copy & paste” with the keyboard.
Your protégé reciprocates with: “I don’t want to remember that “ctrl + v” pastes text, it makes no sense to press V for pasting, it’s too hard for my fingers, and why would I want to bother remembering that? Look, it’s easier to simply copy and paste from the menu with the mouse.”
Knowing what you know about working on computers; what’s going through your head as you hear that?
Right, I think the same thing when developers list their reasons for not wanting to learn VIM commands in their favourite IDE.