Why Vim changed my workfl(ife)ow

What's Vim?

Vim is a powerful text editor, it is founded on 4 different modes: Normal, Insert, Visual, and Command-line. Each mode serves a specific purpose in editing text efficiently.
I think the mind behind that is a real genius. 🧠

How do i discovered Vim?

I had a professor that really hate all kind of modern IDEs. He was obsessed with Emacs but i hated how he was forcing us to use it, and coming from the vscode world I was like "Damn he's a boomer who use those old school stuff he's not updated to the modern workflow". Because of his addiction i was really curious about how he was so obsessed to Emacs and after a research i started seeing a lot of meme about Emacs vs Vim users, you can already imagine, I was freeking curios about those tons of meme too. 😅
I'm a big YouTube consumer and a day the feed proposed me this video:

Mattia metioned Aerospace, "What's that?" and from that point on, a whole new world opened up to me. After some research I found that Aerospace is a window manager for macos based on Vim Motions, I spent the afternoon installing and configuring Aerospace on my mac and after 4 Months i can't live without it. The next days (my feeds was already full of Vim videos and posts) I was casually watching the first video of Salvatore Sanfilippo 's C course, I had it in the watch later for a while. I really admire him and guess what? He use Vi to code, the "dad" of Vim, from that point my mind was blown. 🤯

Where do i use Vim? (everywhere!)

Aerospace

Vim Motions to move between windows and workspaces 🪟.

Ghostty

I use it as my terminal and so i edit my files using Vim

Safari

I use Vimari extension to move in the browser without using the mouse 🖱️

Obsidian

I use Vim editor to create my notes 📝

VSCode

I use Vim extension to code in VSCode. called Vim

My Config

I started with Vim, but my current workflow is now built on Neovim. I made the switch for its superior plugin support and modern ecosystem. For example, I’ve integrated GitHub Copilot (leveraging my GitHub Student Developer Pack) for AI-powered suggestions and use Prettier to ensure my code is perfectly formatted on every save.

Ghostty as a built in window manager, i used it, but i prefer to use Tmux for my terminal sessions since i can have different workspaces and sessions in the same terminal window and most important i can leave those running in the background and attach to them later.

Oh i was forgetting that, like Mattia, i also set up my caps lock to act as an escape key when pressed and ctrl when held down, can't go back.

This is nuts!!!

Examples

Vim Motion thanks to Vimari and Vim integration in VsCode

Using Tmux and nvim

You don't need the touchpad!!!