The case for Visual Studio Code
Visual Studio Code is a wonderful editor and is considered by many to be one of the best editors out there. Its continuous update cycle and it’s large user pool have allowed for the editor to become compatible with many different projects ranging from web development to machine learning projects. The IDE’s clean build and ubiquitous application have allowed it to gradually become one of the most popular editors out there. It even beats out other premium IDEs like IntelliJ as demonstrated by stack overflow’s 2019 survey where more than half of all respondents demonstrated that they used Visual studio code as their preferred development environment.
What is Vim
Vim stands for Vi improved because it is an improvement to an older text editor known as Vi. It is available both in the form of a command-line interface and a standalone application. It is essentially just another text editor like notepad or TextEdit but it has customizable features and shortcuts that have allowed it to gain popularity among programmers. The editor can be accessed in the form of a command-line interface or as a standalone application.
Why migrate to Vim
VS Code is an editor and more so it might be really difficult to justify switching editors. The 3 most significant reasons for me deciding to switch are as follows
Efficiency
Vim prioritizes the user’s ability to edit code over simply writing code because that seems to be the biggest bottleneck when it comes down to the technical aspect of writing software. Writing code is largely dependent on the users typing speed but editing requires the movement of the mouse and placing your cursor every time you want to navigate your code. Vim attempts to remove this bottleneck by building multiple shortcuts into the editor that allow you to navigate the program you’re editing without the need to touch your mouse. This will only shave off a couple of minutes a day in your overall programming efficiency when strictly speaking in terms of removing mouse travel time but this can be much more significant if you feel like you think faster than you type and would like to speed up your workflow.
Customizability
There are so many tools built into VS code but many people don’t use most of them. The simplicity of Vim allows you to pull up your projects fast and you can install plugins to add some of the tools that you would be losing when transferring. The ability to choose what tools you want to integrate into your editor also gives you the choice to customize your editor instead of just having the ability to change the font and colors.
You can make it look so pretty!
Here are some cool vim configurations that I found after scrolling through the vim subreddit for a bit
The Editor war
There is another editor that is a favorite among many programmers knows as emacs. There have been conflicts from members of each editor’s respective communities over which editor is superior and I believe at the end of the day, it just comes down to your preference. I chose to only explore Vim because it seemed to have a significantly larger community and seemed to have more support which I think are of immense value especially when first getting comfortable with any resource. They are both excellent editors and I recommend that you take an in-depth look into the difference between the two before you commit any time to learn either.
How to transition
The best extension that I found to help with the transition from VSCode to Vim is this plugin called Vim.
After playing around with integrating vim into your VS code environment, You can try playing around with the Vimtutor to get comfortable with navigating the editor. Vim comes preinstalled on macs and most Linux distributions so you should be able to simply type in vimtutor after opening your terminal to start the tutorial. If that doesn’t work, download and install the vim app from this link.
