Is it worth it to learn Vim in 2023?
In the age of IDEs with autocomplete, chat gpt and copilot does it makes sense to learn it?
I have seen Devs who use Vim browse through files and make changes at tremendous speed and am curious if it's a good tool to improve my productivity.
I did do a bit of Vim during my bachelor's but mostly used IDEs in all my jobs. It will take me some time to learn and make the switch but I feel it's a good time to learn it.
Also what is the importance of setting up your tooling and IDEs in being able to code faster.
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Discussion
(2 comments)- 32 years agoTech Lead @ Robinhood, Meta, Course Hero
Is it worth it to learn Vim in 2023?
Honestly, probably not. I'm a person who likes the basic stuff, and I learned Vim back as a UCLA student. I still use Vim occasionally, and I think it's a nice tool. But the reality is that IDEs and rich text editors are so far ahead now - I honestly don't seem too much value in Vim besides feeling cool.
I have seen Devs who use Vim browse through files and make changes at tremendous speed and am curious if it's a good tool to improve my productivity.
I'm very sure they're only fast because they have a ton of experience and started off with Vim, back before IDEs got so good. It's more of a muscle memory to them - I don't think it's because Vim is inherently better.
Also what is the importance of setting up your tooling and IDEs in being able to code faster.
It's very important. It was so important at Meta that we had entire teams focusing on make Meta's custom builds of IntelliJ faster.
Since you're at Grab, which is another massive tech company, I'm quite confident that IDEs will be better for you. Between autocomplete, version control visualization, automated testing integration, and so much more, I just don't see how Vim can compete with an IDE. It makes more sense to optimize your IDE environment (the ceiling should be extremely high as IDEs tend to be very customizable) than to drop it and hack around in Vim.
- 22 years agoTech Lead/Manager at Meta, Pinterest, Kosei
Short answer, not really.
As a developer who works in the terminal (not all devs use CLI tools), you should know your way around at least one command line editor: emacs, vim, nano, etc. You don't need to be a wizard, just know the 5-10 commands to do basic navigation/editing.
I am partial to emacs :)
However, at this point, almost all engineers realize the magnificent power of IDEs and the joys of things like visual debugging and completions. If you had to invest in learning vim/emacs deeply vs learning your IDE deeply, you should definitely pick the IDE. Since you spend more time there, it'll have way more impact.
(shameless plug: I did a conference talk about improved efficiency within Android Studio: Android Studio Shortcuts
