vscodevim

vscodevim is the lifehack I needed.

2020 was a life changing changing, to say the least.

In my small world the real life hack was having the patience and time to learn VIM.

Well.....vscodevim.

Honestly, I can't imagine coding any other way. It's a revolution in the way I think about and experience code. I won't be able to do it justice just through this blog. But what I can do is come up with a couple of reasons I went through this route.

This is not a tutorial. These are just my reasons. Find your own reasons to explore VIM if you're curious

I was already using VIM, in a sense.

VIM is hotkeys on overdrive
1. I don't know if this is heresy in the VIM community, but I see VIM as just a bunch of hot keys. Sure there's a huge complexity in VIM, but at the end of the day they're just a combination of hot keys pressed in a certain order.
2. Through the years I've coded in Dreamweaver, Text mate, Coda, Sublime, Eclipse, and finally VSCode. And throughout all of these methods there is a continuous sense of trying to automate searching, finding, and exploring your code. VSCode's Command + p & Command + Shift + p commands were a great departure of finding commands and quickly searching for files. Easily find and trigger commands using a simple hot key.
3. The great thing about VSCode is that a lot of its functionality is clearly displayed in their settings and they can be connected into their keybindings. After the above commands i started exploring... okay, cool. Command + Shift + E opens the file tree, and Command + CTRL + G opens git.
4. But that was my great epiphany, I'm already memorizing and using all of these hot keys to open files, open the file tree, tab through each opened file, run commands, and even format on save. Why wouldn't/couldn't I use some hot keys to help me code a bit faster.
I was already using Hot Keys to work through my code. Just not efficiently.
1. Ask yourself this: How often are you using Command + Shift + Arrow Right to select the whole row and then delete the line. What if you could just press dd to delete everything.
I initially tried VIM by itself.
1. And honestly, it was cool. But I missed coding in VSCode. I got 80% of the same experience as VSCode using NeoVIM and all of the plugins and learning about coc, and so forth. But at the end of the day -- for the life of me -- I could not get a 1:1 theme of Solarized Light/Dark. And yes, I've tried searching for the right configurations a ton of times.
2. I also missed using Command + * for a lot of things, like tabbing through opened editors. Yes, there are ways of doing it in VIM.
VSCodeVim is not VIM.
1. That is to say, that as much as the vscodevim plugin is trying to emulate VIM it's not necessarily going to emulate everything that's great about VIM. And that's great!
2. I personally find a lot of usefulness in using VIM by itself. In fact it's probably good to know how to escape VIM (insert XKCD here).

Outline

Prob talk about different commands that I tend to use.

Last updated 4 years ago

I was already using VIM, in a sense.

VIM is hotkeys on overdrive

I don't know if this is heresy in the VIM community, but I see VIM as just a bunch of hot keys. Sure there's a huge complexity in VIM, but at the end of the day they're just a combination of hot keys pressed in a certain order.
Through the years I've coded in Dreamweaver, Text mate, Coda, Sublime, Eclipse, and finally VSCode. And throughout all of these methods there is a continuous sense of trying to automate searching, finding, and exploring your code. VSCode's Command + p & Command + Shift + p commands were a great departure of finding commands and quickly searching for files. Easily find and trigger commands using a simple hot key.
The great thing about VSCode is that a lot of its functionality is clearly displayed in their settings and they can be connected into their keybindings. After the above commands i started exploring... okay, cool. Command + Shift + E opens the file tree, and Command + CTRL + G opens git.
But that was my great epiphany, I'm already memorizing and using all of these hot keys to open files, open the file tree, tab through each opened file, run commands, and even format on save. Why wouldn't/couldn't I use some hot keys to help me code a bit faster.

I was already using Hot Keys to work through my code. Just not efficiently.

Ask yourself this: How often are you using Command + Shift + Arrow Right to select the whole row and then delete the line. What if you could just press dd to delete everything.

I initially tried VIM by itself.

And honestly, it was cool. But I missed coding in VSCode. I got 80% of the same experience as VSCode using NeoVIM and all of the plugins and learning about coc, and so forth. But at the end of the day -- for the life of me -- I could not get a 1:1 theme of Solarized Light/Dark. And yes, I've tried searching for the right configurations a ton of times.
I also missed using Command + * for a lot of things, like tabbing through opened editors. Yes, there are ways of doing it in VIM.

VSCodeVim is not VIM.

That is to say, that as much as the vscodevim plugin is trying to emulate VIM it's not necessarily going to emulate everything that's great about VIM. And that's great!
I personally find a lot of usefulness in using VIM by itself. In fact it's probably good to know how to escape VIM (insert XKCD here).

Outline

Prob talk about different commands that I tend to use.