[fizzled]

I think this is a bad idea because remapping keys has significant consequences with compatibility as you develop across more platforms. A good vi user is trying to build universal muscle memory, and making personal exceptions kinda ruins the efficacy of the editor.

For example: I switch between dozens of computers, some are transient VMs or cloud instances, and I cannot afford the time (or simply cannot alter the system) to set each one up to my personal VI specs.

(Ironically, I'm a mac fan, but this is my biggest gripe going between every OS and Apple: the command key is absurd; I tried to remap to make everything work like Ctrl but that hoses the entire system and screws up VNC/RemoteDesktop...)

[samatman]

I haven't done this completely (I use the jk remap hack in preference to escape) but I agree with this in general.

Emacs is an operating system, and vi is a language, which is widely "spoken". But if you invent your own dialect, you have an MxN problem, of getting M changes to register across the N programs which will listen to you when you speak to them in vi.

And I simply must nibble the bait in your last line: As a Mac native user, the command key, and consistency in commands across every native application, is one of the great features. It means, among other things, that Ctrl-whatever won't be intercepted when I send it to a program that uses it, or alternately, that it won't shadow the OS level affordance.

Back when I was spending five days a week inside a Linux VM, the context switch between Cmd-X and Ctrl-X for cut was pretty rapid and painless. Sure, I'd get the occasional cache miss, but that's harmless.

[njharman]

You should absolutely personalize tools you use extensively. Vim if your a writer or programmer.

It’s very little to cp .vimrc. I do a lot more, have dotfiles git repo scripted to self install.

But yes transient vms are problem. But I’m willing to suffer a little on them to have 20x more enjoyable and productive were I do 90% of my writing.

[wyclif]

The first thing I do on a new machine is clone my dotfiles from Github. It's fast enough for an action that increases my productivity exponentially and I'll end up saving back that time it took to clone very quickly. I don't switch machines that often anyway.

[SPBS]

I wholeheartedly agree with this sentiment. I have a lot of keybindings but I always make sure I can survive without them, such as by dropping into vanilla vim to once in a while to do work and ensuring I'm not completely lost. A user in the vim subreddit refers to this as 'sharpening the saw'.