The Vim Journey

I started using Vim a while back and mentioned it in my newsletter. However, progress has been slow since then. Let’s start from the beginning.

Initial Vim Experience

I initially struggled to learn Vim motions in VS Code. Most advice suggested using Vim within VS Code before fully committing to a standalone Vim installation. I spent about 3-4 months becoming reasonably efficient with some basic Vim motions. To be precise, I focused only on the motions I frequently use: up, down, left, right, skipping words, skipping lines, deleting lines, and copy-paste. Nothing more.

Over time, my progress plateaued, and my productivity stagnated. I then took a two-month break, around November and December, from practicing Vim altogether.

Current Status

I’ve recently started using Vim again, this time focusing on expanding my repertoire of Vim motions. I’ve also finally installed Neovim with LazyVim. Just to ruin it for you guys, you can exit Vim using Shift+zz or :wq (write and quit).

I suspect I might have RSI, as I’ve been experiencing constant pain in my arms and shoulders since January. This makes learning Vim even more crucial for me. I’ll be updating this blog to hold myself accountable and track my learning progress.

Anyone interested can follow my progress on WakaTime: https://wakatime.com/mansoorbarri. If you’d like to set up WakaTime for your development environment, check out this blog post: https://mansoorbarri.com/guides/wakatime/.