i am a mediocre vim user. sure, i’ve been using vim for over twenty years, have handcrafted a custom vimrc, and even written a syntax file, but for my day-to-day usage, my skills are resoundingly and undeniably mediocre.
this is a good place to be. people who are ‘power users’ spend so much time fiddling with plugins and configurations to build their perfect homerolled ide that they never get any real work done. vim becomes their personality, not their tool. by contrast, novices don’t have the skill or knowledge to leverage vim’s power. they thrash around, treating vim like a cumbersome and difficult nano; they google how to quit. that’s not good for productivity!
the sweet spot is in the middle: mediocrity.
this post is going to go over five vim features that will get you on the path from novice to mediocre.
