Learn the essentials so you can flip that Vim plugin 'enable' switch and never look back.
Vim, which stands for Vi Improved, is a popular open source text editor. It is a clone of the Unix text editor Vi. Originally written for the Amiga in 1988, it is available for almost every operating system.
Vim is accessed through the terminal, by launching a file with vim <filename>, in the same way you might open a file or directory with Visual Studio Code by executing code .
If you ever enter Vim in the terminal and can't figure out how to quit, it's actually quite simple.
Hit Esc to ensure you're in -Normal- mode, then type :q! to quit without saving or :wq to quit and save any changes you've made to the document. Not so hard, right?
While Vim is a text editor based in the terminal, the benefits of learning it extend to popular editors like Visual Studio Code as well. Vim uses a consistent set of hotkeys that can be enabled in any popular IDE with a simple plugin. The primary benefit of adopting these hotkeys is that it (eventually) makes editing text faster and more fun. The best part, is that no matter what happens to your current IDE (RIP Atom) there will always be a vim plugin for whatever you use next.
Ready to start your vim journey with vigor? Go ahead and install the Vim Extension for VS Code. You can always disable it if you need to take a break.
Ready? Let's get started.