Why is Vim my Main Text Editor?

What is vim?

For those who don’t know, vim is a terminal-based text editor. It was released back in 1991 as sort of the successor to an older terminal-based text editor called “vi.” Vim stood for “Vi IMitation,” but now it stands for “Vi IMproved.” Shirou is right.

So what’s even good about vim?

It is lightweight and is extremely fast whilst packing a ton of powerful features.

So what’s bad about vim?

Using this tool effectively requires rigorous training and experience. It is not for the faint of heart.

That was so dramatic. Vim presents a steep learning curve so it will definitely take a lot of time before one can get the most out of it.

But why am I using vim?

For the record, I am not a masochist.

It is mainly to overcome an obstacle that is currently present since back then and even now during the time of writing of this post. That is, the fact that my equipment is a bit outdated and I still can’t afford an upgrade.

Have you heard of the locus of control? It is about one’s beliefs on how much control they have over their lives. There are many things that we just have no say on. Instead of attributing the difficulties in our lives to such factors, we should focus on what we can actually do. This principle presents a lesson that we have a choice to better our circumstances despite of the external factors in play.

As of the moment, I cannot afford better equipment, specifically the hardware. However, instead of sinking down the depths of despair, I took it upon myself to learn how to use “much efficient yet hard to use” software and I got into a different OS that is lighter compared to Windows. Even though it was challenging at first, eventually it became commonplace. Despite the limitations such as further incompatibility with a lot of desktop software and games as they are mainly only released for Windows, I still found ways to work around such an obstacle through sheer experience and mastery over time.

Getting used to linux, the terminal, and vim isn’t bad at all. It’s really powerful and I can work on tasks such as setting up servers through SSH as at those times I’ll be on a command-line interface. By also working on the terminal, my system uses less RAM and runs fast even though it isn’t beefed up. Graphical interfaces, while it may be convenient to some, is actually one of the parts in software that significantly slows down the experience.

This locus of control let me improve myself as I was forced to work around the limitations in a rather creative manner. It also helped boost my productivity as a side effect within the context of not having a slow experience from all the unnecessary graphics rendering that would otherwise be present as GUI frequently on Windows.

It all goes back to, “To him that will, ways are not wanting”