But I gave vi another shot, and I'm so glad I did. The learning curve can be steep, and it's really unintuitive at first (or it was for me). But once it clicks a little bit, and you settle in.. Wow. I felt way more productive using it than any other editor.
I don't know where I saw it, but the idea that "Code exists to be read" really resonates with me. I don't care how fast I can crank out code. I care about how efficiently I can hop around from place to place to grok what is going on and how it needs to change.
The killer feature of vim that I feel like very few people know about is it's remote editor feature.
Launch a long lived instance of vim with a `servername` set, for example I do: `vim --servername EDITOR`
Then set up a application shortcut that will open the file using the prefix `vim --servername EDITOR --remote <file>`
When you open a file, it gets opened in your single vim instance.
From there you can navigate between all your open files using `:b <file-tab-complete>`
It's really a joy to use. You don't have the mess of tabs where you run out of space super fast, you just have a bunch of open files that you can switch between super easily by name.
Now this is dope, I used to rely on a trick I discovered in a conference[0], append to the `path` variable in your .vimrc so you can recursively fuzzy find files in the directory where you opened Vim, and more recently setting global marks[1] in the files of interest.
I would guess the difference is that I use a separate terminal window for all of that stuff. I have my desktop split into three main workspaces. The first has my terminal, the second my browser, the third my editor. I have two more workspaces just in case, but they rarely get used. I have shortcuts set up to hop between workspaces using `<super><workspace number>`.
If I want to track through where something is used or defined, `git grep` usually gets me what I want. From there, if there is a file I want to look at, I use my shortcut `go <filename>` to open it. This used to be an alias for `gnome-open`, but a couple years ago they switched it to `xdg-open` . It opens the file with whatever program would open it when opening it from the file browser, which for any text file is my vim instance over in workspace 3.
I don't pay much attention to which files are open or not. Usually I build up a working set of files I care about pretty quickly and then I can hop between them from within vim. Otherwise I can easily go back over to my terminal and open it by name directly.
It may not be for you, but it's far from a nightmare in my experience.
Right, everyone has their preferences. As was said in another comment, merely paying attention to and adapting one's personal tooling is a huge differentiator between software developers, regardless of which particular tools those might be. Your setup has a lot of conceptual similarities to mine. I use terminals heavily, but ultimately I personally like a GUI as the 'root' of my working space. I'd rather start from a place where I can navigate everything visually/spatially and then add shortcuts on top of that to automate the most repetitive/tedious paths that naturally occur in that environment.
(This is a blessing and a curse. You never have to worry about OS-level hacks to make caps lock a control key, but on the other hand, there is no way in the USB HID protocol to say "send an !". Rather, the keyboard has to synthesize a shift + 1. And what character that actually maps to depends on your OS, because of course it does.)
By far the most irritating thing about others' keyboards is they have not disabled it yet. Second most is that Ctrl isn't there instead.
I keep a caps lock on my programmable keyboard for this (Fn+K).
I also like SQL to be formatted with capital letters for keywords.
type_a_constant ctrl-[ vawU
Probably don’t even need visual mode that’s just how I work.
Biggest downside is using someone else's keyboard. I've grown a nasty habit of hitting escape instinctually, every time I finish typing something. I turn on their caps lock so regularly! Still worth it though
I tried it because I was having a bunch of wrist pain. The actual solution to my wrist pain was easy: Don't code on a laptop keyboard. The ergonomics are terrible.
ctrl-[ (for right hand) or ctr-3 (left hand, thanks teddyh) => escape
ctrl-i => tab
ctrl-h => backspace
ctrl-m => return
ctrl-w => delete prev word
ctrl-u => clear line
ctrl-o => cmd mode for 1 cmd
...and many, many more, including all the completion options.
https://github.com/alols/xcape (for linux)
https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/132564/how-can-i-r... (for macOS)
https://github.com/ililim/dual-key-remap (for windows)
Also, as a VIM user, I only have to use Alt when I’m dealing with GUI apps, which is definitely common, but a time when I don’t mind moving my hands around.
So for me, Esc is Alt. Alt is caps lock. And of course caps lock is Esc.
And I swap Super key and Control, since the Super key is easier to press with my palm on my ergonomic keyboard. And Ctrl does have a lot of uses in Vim.
I also map the Windows Menu key (not the Super key, but the other one which is used for showing context menus) To underscore. That helps me type C identifiers with multiple words in them. This one remapping is a huge benefit, almost as important as mapping caps lock to Esc.