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by davidarkemp2 5034 days ago
In my experience, it's better to spend a long time playing with Vim, and then look at plugins. There's a lot that Vim does out of the box without any additional tools, and spending time learning to use (some) of it without trying to make it more like another editor is the only way you're going to get better at it. Learn about buffers and how to manage them before using BufExplorer. Learn the (many) movement keys, and insertion, append, replace, substitue, change, options before you use Surround.

It may sound odd, but learn to use the tool by itself before you try and plugin anything else, otherwise you'll just get lost.
2 comments
icambron 5034 days ago
I disagree. As someone who started using Vim recently, the issue wasn't learning modes/key sequences as it was just reaching feature parity with my previous editor (note that doesn't mean "acts like my previous editor", just "is at least as capable as my previous editor"). If I can't open files really quickly, I feel lost and upset, so I took care of that very early in the learning process by setting up CtrlP. Same with some other plugins.

More generally, to me, the features that happen ship with Vim aren't special. I want the best editor for me, which might require features the builders of Vim didn't want to include. Vanilla is just another flavor.

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johncoltrane 5034 days ago
That's why you need to learn Vim without plugins. Vim can "open files really quickly":

    :e *ba<Tab>
    :vs ../**/fo<Tab>
I love CtrlP but you can go a long way without any plugins. It just takes some time and effort.
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davidarkemp2 5034 days ago
Why are you using Vim and not your previous editor?
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lengarvey 5034 days ago
I'd say that it's better to start off with installing vundle (https://github.com/gmarik/vundle/) and then whenever you feel like you're having problems doing something like file/buffer navigation, auto-completion or making vim pretty then go out looking specifically for something you like and vunlde will make it really easy to install just by pointing at the github.

Whatever you do, don't install syntastic unless you want your vim to run awfully slow.

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