I love vim. It has changed my life and how I view writing, coding, documenting, journaling… it has made me realize that text is truly the universal interface.
As an avid user of the LazyVim distribution of Neovim, it is valuable for me to remember and master the foundational concepts of vim - the original text editing software which is the basis of neovim.
Vim Resources to Digest
Try to read this first if you are stumbling on this page of mine.
Navigation
- homerow principle - for best ergonomics, your fingers should not move away
from the homerow
- hjkl → left, down, up, right
- after getting used to this, I can’t live without vim motions in my wider digital environment. Hence I installed Homerow - Keyboard shortcuts for every button in MacOS
- hjkl → left, down, up, right
- jumplist and marks
Modal Editing
- contrary to popular opinion, it’s not a good idea to be in edit mode all the
time whenever a text box is presented to you. it’s too easy to make mistakes
- vim solution: separate “normal”, “insert”, “visual”, and “command” modes. I might be missing some
Buffers and Windows
Vim Tips
Get the name of the current file.
1 CTRL+g→:mess, scroll to bottom to see latest message with the full path