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Users of Vim and similars, what exactly makes it useful compared to other text editors? How much time do you suppose you save when working with it? (programming.dev)

submitted 4 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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I'd like actual examples instead of "I work faster", something like "I can move straight to the middle of the file with 7mv" or "I can keep 4 different text snippets in memory and paste each with a number+pt, like 2pt", things that you actually use somewhat frequently instead of what you can do, but probably only did once.

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[–] waywardninja 4 points 4 months ago (1 children)

I wouldn't consider myself a power user if vim or the bindings I don't normally use the markers or anything. However, I will spend a lot of time and effort to get just a small set of basic commands into my ide.

I like my hands on my keyboard and vim bindings allows super easy common things like ~ for capitalization of a single character. 'gUw' for uppercasing a word. 'dd' is much better to delete a line; than highlighting and deleting with a mouse. The most bad ass things I think it does incredibly well, is grabbing text or changing text between () or {} symbols. A simple 3 key command grabs the text between the symbol, deletes it, puts you in edit mode. Screw it up esc-u.

Another cool thing I use is vim clipboard and the system OS clip board in tandem.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago (1 children)

you can delete a line in most ides by having a cursor in the line and pressing ctrl+x (with the side effect of putting it in the clipboard)

[–] waywardninja 1 points 4 months ago

Truth. I should have mentioned I'm not a huge fan of multi key combos to perform actions. I guess that's why I gravitate towards vim over emacs. Good to know though.