Background
When people ask what IDE I use, I say Vim. When people ask how I got started with Vim, I tell them my history:
- Started with Notepad
- Moved to Sublime Text
- Enabled Sublime Text’s Vintage mode
- Transitioned to Vim
- Added Tmux to my workflow
If I were to restart from the beginning, I would use VS Code with the Vim extension.
Tips
- Learn Vim incrementally.
- Don’t go all-in at once.
- Enable Vim keybindings.
Learn
You want to learn Vim incrementally. Going all-in at once can lead to people giving up in frustration.
I recommend spending the time to master a workflow. At the beginning, productivity will drop because you’re not used to it. But once it becomes second nature, you’ll pick up speed and be faster than before.
Once you master a workflow, you can pick up a new one. How do you know if you’ve mastered a workflow? When you go from consciously doing it to unconsciously doing it.
IDE
For IDE users, you can enable Vim keybindings. I’ve used PHPStorm with Vim keybindings at work and that was faster than my personal Vim setup.
Ultimately, do what works for you. If you’re productive without Vim, then you don’t need it. But if you want to give it a shot, then go for it!