Vim Is Worth It

A lot has been attempted from my side regarding programming, specifically about IDEs and advanced programming tools, but in the end, everything is text editing.

Programming languages provide developers with syntax and structures to create meaningful applications, we can develop applications with a bunch of stuff in them, without any order, or try to create a semantically beautiful scenery within the code.

Everything boils down at the end to buffers and text manipulation, programming languages transform text into data structures and functions, and our goal as developers is to be good at programming, that means, manipulating text within buffers to create applications.

I’ve used pure IDEs for a while, I’ve used Emacs for a while, and I’m now using Vim, and I can conclude that all the time invested in them is worth it. The skills learned are still applicable 10 or 15 years later.

It matters to learn to manipulate text effectively, it gives you freedom and allows you to be flexible concerning tools and environments, and all boils down to text editing.

So, learn Vim (or Neovim), learn Emacs, and learn their motions because it will all be worth it.