Just VIM it!

There was a time where I tried and used lots of editors. There was a time where I didn't have an editor that was good to edit _all_ kind of files and in all kind of environments. Well, then one day I came across VIM and I fell in love. This is a true story ;].

There are LOTS of things that is GREAT about VIM. I could write a longer article about VIM - - but, there are already good articles. What then? What about a video!? Yeah, lets do a video! And on top of that, lets also show some easy XHTML & Python web development. And yeah, lets also show some nice Java editing.

Click here to see the VIM video (15min - QuickTime - 10MB). In this video I only show like 2% of VIM features - but the features I show are also pretty cool.

You have watched the video and you are thinking: Let me try that editor. You download VIM and you launch it - then you start to type but nothing happens!?!? They you reinstall VIM and start bashing about how much it sucks. Now my advice to you is: You must give VIM a chance and you must learn to use VIM before it can benefit you! I.e. you can't be born with knowledge on how to edit in vi - - you must learn. But once you learn it, you are going to have the best damn tool out there! Here are some nice links you can visit:

• VIM tutorial Socrates teaching Glaucon VIM - do I really need to say more?
• VIM.org The official page with lots of great scripts and tips! You can also download VIM from here.
• Nice article!
• VIM cheat sheet

VI(M) vs. Emacs? All I can say is: Emacs is really a nice O/S, but it lacks a good editor. Here is a little funny story about Emacs: At my university they use Emacs all over the place. Now the funny part is this: Normally in Denmark we use "special" Danish keyboards, but EVERY computer at the computer science department use English keyboards - The reason for this is Emacs...! Now people have their own laptops and home computers and they install Emacs - but many of the shortcuts just don't make sense, since the keystrokes are even more hilarious because of the danish keyboard design - A real solution for this problem would be to have 2 keyboards - one "normal" and one "mini" keyboard with Ctrl, Meta and Shift for the feet - yeah, that would be nice for the Emacs users.