Vim

The past couple of weeks I started using Vim as my primary editor. I was pretty comfortable using TextMate and the standard OS X keyboard shortcuts for most of my text editing tasks, but the decision to switch came down to one thing: real estate.

My main computer has been an 11" laptop and I often find myself squeezing every last pixel out of it. By running Vim in fullscreen I gained precious space when using side by side windows— which I’m usually doing when test driving my code. Vim is also the most widely used editor around the office, so once I start pairing more with other apprentices and craftsman I definitely want to be sure I’m comfortable with it. Now that I’ve had the good fortune of inheriting a hand-me-down 17" laptop from the craftsmen I still find myself using Vim (with even more windows open)

I’m becoming pretty efficient with it and I may have even already passed my TextMate productivity point. However, when I’m going to be primarily reading through code I still find myself opening that project in TextMate. I think I prefer it more because it’s a matter of context switching. When I’m in Vim I always have my hands on the keyboard, ready to type out the next command, but when I read through a project in TextMate my hands leave the keyboard and I grab the mouse to scroll through files and click through the familiar folder icons and directory structures. I wonder if those feelings will change as I spend more time in Vim…