Vim Struggles

Vim. The ultimate developer/programmer "cool kids" tool. People who use it, swore by it, people who can't learn it say its a waste of time. But with people who do know how to use it, it garners a sort of respect when you can work with it.

I have a problem with it though. I've already learned the fundamentals of using vim and I get why people like it. It's specialized tool for text editing, which undoubtedly, a lot of programmers do. Once you have mastered it or even just get used to it, you start to get faster at navigating and editing, all with the use of your keyboard. It eliminates the time wasted switching from keyboard to mouse or touchpad and keeps your hands on the keyboard for the most part, ready to type in commands or input text. But my problem exist when I have to do things that needs more than just text editing.

This is what my vim setup looks like.

I've tried to hard to integrate its use in my work but I always end up wasting more time. In software development today, IDE's are becoming even more powerful and are now tailor-made for specific developments and not just text editing. Some people even argue that software development now involves a lot more time off the keyboard than on it.

I tried various things to get the speed of text editing using vim command and still maintain the useful features of an IDE but to no avail. I tried using plugins on vim and configuring it to have the  IDE features I needed but it still felt lacking and made it harder for me to code. I tried using a vim emulation plugin on the IDE that I used but that was so unstable that it often made the whole IDE freeze where I have to force close it. I just couldn't make it work for me.

Maybe I'm just not trying hard enough? I don't know. But I'll try again going through a book called "Practical Vim" by Drew Neil. Hopefully I can fully integrate it into my workflow sometime in the near future.