# How I Use Vim for Productivity and Efficiency

I use vim (a text editor) for my product development work, which is full of repetitive tasks. For example, I’m currently working on a project that has many, many files and many, many lines of code. In total, there are over 10,000 lines of code that I have to navigate through. It would take me forever if I didn’t have vim on my side.

I have used a variety of text editors in my career. I started with pico on my workstations, worked briefly with joe on [Solaris](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solaris_(operating_system)) and then moved to emacs and nano. When I moved to Linux as my primary operating system, I started using vim to edit text files. Then I learned about vim and how to use it and that is when I really fell in love with vim.

I am not going to go into all of the details about vim but if you are new to vim I recommend [this tutorial](https://vim.is/).

### Vim Tricks

I am just going to highlight some tricks that I have found useful.

So how exactly does a guy like me get used to typing commands left and right? It took some time and patience, but it was well worth it.

* **keyboard macros**  You can start recording your keys with `ESC` followed by `qh`. Then whatever you type in vim (including commands) will be recorded. Press `ESC` `q` to stop recording. Now press `@h` to replay your key strokes.

* **repeat action** if you want to repeat an action, just type a number followed by the action. To delete 10 lines press `10dd`. To press 50 lines type `50dd`. You can do this for keyboard recording too, `50@h`.

* **run commands** you can run commands right from within vim. `!ls` runs the command ls in your terminal. You can do this for any command.

* **scrolling** you can scroll inside vim with the keys `ctrl+e` and `ctrl+y`, no need to use the mouse

* **move to end/begin** you can use the keys `0` and `$` to move to the beginning and end of a line. No need to hold down the cursor key for several seconds.

* **jump to line** press the keys `140G` to jump to line 140. You can also use `:140` if you prefer those keys.

* **set your .vimrc** you should have a good .vimrc file in place so that you have all the settings ready to go. This means options for colours, font, tab settings etc. You can put this on git and pull whenever you access another computer. That way your settings stay in sync no matter what computer you use.
 
* **vim mode** if you have to use an IDE for work, you can enable vim emulation. This works in visual studio, jetbrains IDEs and probably tons of others.