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Comment by kfinley | Hacker News Reader

If you are just staring with VIM, I recommend taking a look at spf13-vim (https://github.com/spf13/spf13-vim)

I have been using vi/vim since 1989, and I found spf13 to be a totally frustrating experience. Twice I tried it out and quit. It messes with settings of neocomplcache (issues reported and verified with authors), it installs plugins like autocomplete (??) which can also be frustrating. I had hunt through the source of some 20 or more plugins to figure out the offending ones and remove them.

However, that's just my experience. I'd suggest he try a clean vim and add plugins as he needs them. There are plenty of links suggesting great plugins for developers. "sjl" (steve losh) has an article which was linked here (Coming Home to Vim) that mentions some good plugins.

The reason that I suggest spf13, is because it shows what's possible. I spent nearly a year building up a set of plugins and settings only to discover that 95% of what I had "discovered" was included.

I'm sure it has it's problems, but you can easily remove all of the included bundles. I think at the very least it provides a well structured foundation to built upon.

Thanks for the tips!

I've been studying other's .vimrc files in an effort to understand what all vim vanilla is capable of. Once I get that dialed in, I'll look into plugins for my local box; I just want to make sure that I can use it effectively just by firing up any new VM.

Also, I'm being sacrilegious and setting myself up for primarily --INSERT-- mode, since its the most like a GUI text editor. Its making the barrier of entry slightly more endurable!

Sooner or later someone is going to tell you to put this in your .vimrc:

    inoremap  <Up>     <NOP>
    inoremap  <Down>   <NOP>
    inoremap  <Left>   <NOP>
    inoremap  <Right>  <NOP>
    noremap   <Up>     <NOP>
    noremap   <Down>   <NOP>
    noremap   <Left>   <NOP>
    noremap   <Right>  <NOP>

This will get you to stop using the arrow keys for moving around, use either hjkl, or faster combinations such as "f" "t". Hope you get out of insert mode soon!

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