way up there on the plateau, it’s full of rabbit holes

Vim has a hilariously steep learning curve. My motivation for climbing it was to have a better management of my first book-length attempt at creative writing, but as I realised what Vim and it’s vast plugin ecosystem could offer, I began to use it as my central application for all of my IT workflow.

Once you’ve developed basic competence, you’re up there on the high plateau, and down the rabbit hole you go, lost for hours in tiny configuration tweaks, driven by shocks of realisation that you can quickly do yet another manipulation 10x faster.

but then it fits like a glove

Vim offers an excellent and terse built-in text-manipulating language, and infinite configurability, so whenever I find I’m doing a certain manipulation regularly, I write in my vimrc some commands to do that for me, or, if it’s a more complex scenario such as, recently, editing HTML files, I look online for the best plugins for my needs. So over the years my configuration has grown, and I modify it frequently - it’s all become second nature. When I discover a new plugin, I spend a few hours understanding what it can offer me, and how to implement it, and I gain back that time in faster workflow.

manage those plugins

I’ve quite a list of plugins enabled. Initially I used plugin managers to keep them up-to-date, then, as I realised what my management needs were, I wrote my own Bash and PowerShell scripts to run whenever I feel like updating my plugins.

Go, go, GO!

If you want to learn Vim go search, it’s all available online - so many excellent guides that have helped me get to where I am now.

If you’re thinking of trying Vim - if you’re patient, and willing to learn, you’ll be richly rewarded.

My vim configuration is here: vimfiles.

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