Slow down Vim to get faster | Hacker News Reader

Slow down Vim to get faster

featurist.co.uk

6 pointsartemave3 comments

The first (and only, ATM) comment is spot-on. I'd advise Vimmers who have lots of plugins to try

    $ vim --noplugin filename

for half a day. Doing so may put many things in perspective.

Best prep ever for those times when you're on vacation and your boss calls you up and says all the things are broken. You'll probably be connecting over a high latency network, on someone else's machine and without a .vimrc to your nome.

A "plugin all the things" type would probably be more productive with nano than vim at that point, especially if the person has remapped default shortcuts (cardinal sin IMHO).

Been there done that. When I switched I wasted a great deal of time turning Vim into a TextMate clone with more than 40 freaking plugins and a miles long vimrc with dozens of insert-mode mappings.

Until I had to use a bare Vim on a remote Linux box. Luckily I knew enough basic stuff to get the job done but boy was it a slow, painful, eye opening and "life changing" experience!

The "life changing" part was of course when I thrashed my ~/.vim directory and wiped out my ~/.vimrc.

Now, I run with 13 or so carefully chosen plugins (which I find too much, some times) and my own sane vimrc where everything has its purpose. And I'm perfectly able to use a bare Vim without breaking a sweat.

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