I’m Learning Vim

But is it worth it?

I want to preface this post by mentioning that I am not a developer. I’m just an enthusiast who enjoys learning new skills so keep that in mind while reading.

I have recently started learning Vim. I have access to other text editors but I want to learn this one. Every post on the internet mentions that you will not be taken seriously in the Linux community if you don’t use it. Like bro, do you even Vim? I hope to one day be part of the Linux elite.

Since I started this journey I’ve made some observations, good and bad, about Vim. Enjoy.

Vim is unnecessary for my needs.

One of the selling points of Vim is that it’s available on many systems and sometimes it’s the only thing available. I don’t go out to various job sites and I’m not in an office where I’m limited to the tools provided to me. I have sudo privileges on all my machines and can install whatever I want.

They claim it’s efficient.

This may be true but I’m not there yet. I’m getting better but there is a steep learning curve. I’m not sure if I am disciplined enough to see this to end.

It’s open source.

This makes me happy.

Vim is customizable.

Once I learned a bit about customizing my editor using the .vimrc file I began liking Vim a lot more. Just having relative number lines makes navigation so much easier. Mine is very simple. I haven’t scratched the surface of what can be done. I plan on doing a post focusing on .vimrc in the near future.

It’s kind of fun.

As frustrating as Vim can be I am having fun learning it. Vim is a lot different than anything else I used before. It’s challenging but not impossible.

So that’s where I’m at right now. These are just some of my early opinions and I’m sure they will change as I continue learning. To answer my original question, is it worth it? I don’t know yet but I’m going to continue the journey and I will keep you date.