Can someone please explain to me why I should learn vim? I've made several attempts in my lifetime because I thought there would be some magical "ah-ha" moment, but it never came.
Separate modes for command & insert just feels inherently clumsy and slow to me. Is there some other killer feature that can't or hasn't been reproduced by modern editors?
Higher precision in intent for many standard operations. These aren't perfectly Vim commands, but from the Vim-like 'evil mode' for emacs, I have some examples of common idioms I use frequently:
- 'I want to change the name of this variable. (Change Word)'
- 'I want to copy the contents of this braced block. (Yank Inside Matching-braces)'
- 'I want to surround this word in parentheses. (Visual-mode (region selection) Around Word Surround-with Matching-parens)'
You get used to the separate modes fairly quickly. Your existing editor already works that way when switching between 'region' and 'insert' modes; it's just the command mode that throws people off initially. It's not that rough, especially if you have a reasonably placed key to return to command mode.
> - 'I want to surround this word in parentheses. (Visual-mode (region selection) Around Word Surround-with Matching-parens)'
Holy shit, thank you. I've been looking for something like this for half a decade and never found it (I don't even know how I missed it!)
I believe Vim-proper needs a plugin for that behaviour, so keep that in mind.
Do you know what plugin it is? I will try to search for an evil version (Or I could just write my own, but my task list is large and my energy very low these days)