Step 1 for those who
really want to boost productivity (but let's be honest, most of us don't!): forget about all those plugins that are time sinks to configure and integrate with each other, about obscure tweaks that take half a day to get right, and about elaborate .vimrc's that take you so far away from 'standard' that you're crippled without them. Stick to a fairly basic standard install and a .vimrc of 50 lines, tops.
I've been using vim for 15+ years now, since late 1990's. I use viemu in Visual Studio and I've written code in 10+ languages in vim. I've written non-trivial vimscripts and integration tools with other parts of my workflows over the years. I love how comfortable it feels, and I feel crippled when I have to use a 'normal' editor; like walking with a little pebble in your shoe - not a big a deal enough to prevent you from doing anything you could otherwise, but still damn uncomfortable.
With that said, I'm not convinced that I've actually saved time with it. I shudder if I think of the many man-days I spend 10 years ago on getting this and that plugin working, tweaking settings and keybindings for things I use twice a month tops and automating things that I could have done manually 10 times faster. It's not like regular editors are that much slower to use. It felt like throwing off a yoke when I dumped all those plugins so that I could focus on writing software, instead of tweaking the editor so that I could write programs with a few keystrokes.
So yeah, that was gramps' advice I guess...
I've been using vim for 15+ years now, since late 1990's. I use viemu in Visual Studio and I've written code in 10+ languages in vim. I've written non-trivial vimscripts and integration tools with other parts of my workflows over the years. I love how comfortable it feels, and I feel crippled when I have to use a 'normal' editor; like walking with a little pebble in your shoe - not a big a deal enough to prevent you from doing anything you could otherwise, but still damn uncomfortable.
With that said, I'm not convinced that I've actually saved time with it. I shudder if I think of the many man-days I spend 10 years ago on getting this and that plugin working, tweaking settings and keybindings for things I use twice a month tops and automating things that I could have done manually 10 times faster. It's not like regular editors are that much slower to use. It felt like throwing off a yoke when I dumped all those plugins so that I could focus on writing software, instead of tweaking the editor so that I could write programs with a few keystrokes.
So yeah, that was gramps' advice I guess...