26 JAN 2021 [ vim ]

IMPROVING YOUR PRODUCTIVITY WITH VIM (+ VS CODE SHORTCUTS)

When my peers see me writing code they think I’m possessed by some kind of dark forze which drives me to use a series of strange shortcuts for them. The reality is that, with practice, I have gained a great ability to put the mouse aside.

But, to be honest, the path was hard. The vas majority Vim’s gurus uses such a great amount of shortcuts, macros, and patterns that shocked me out.

The Basics

That’s the entry point of this post, bring you a series of most common shortcurts that I use in my day to day as a web dev. Furthermore, there are also great shortcuts for VS Code that will take you to the next level.

Modes

• i - For normal mode. In this mode you can insert text before the cursor.
• esc - Exit insert mode. A fat cursor appears and you will able to move throught the document.
• ctrl+v - Start visual mode (lines).
• ctrl+V - Start visual mode (blocks).

Movement

• h - Left
• j - Down
• k - Up
• l - Right
• 0 - Jump to the start of the line.
• $ - Jump to the end of the line.
• G - Go to the last line of the document.
• zz - Go to the first line of the document.

Exiting

• :q!- Quit and throw away unsaved changes.
• :wq - Write (save) and quit.

Most used shortcuts (for me)

Insert text

• I- Insert at the beginning of the line.
• A - Insert (append) at the end of the line.
• o - Append (open) a new line below the current line.
• O - Append (open) a new line above the current line.
• gd - Go to a definition (variable, function…).
• gf - Go to a specifil file.

Editing

• r - Replace a single character.
• x - Delete characters.
• u - Undo
• ctrl+r - Redo
• ciw - Replace the entire word.
• cc - Replace the entire line.

Cut and paste

• yy - Copy a line.
• 2yy - Copy two lines.
• p - Paste after cursor.
• P - Paste before cursor.
• dd - Delete a line.
• d$ - Delete to the end of the line.
• dw - Delete the characters of the word from the cursor position to the start of the next word.

Pro commands

• line-number + G - Go to this line.
• /search-term - Search inside the code. Move witch n.
• % - Move to matching character ({}, []).
• :/s/text-to-change/new-text/gc - Replaces the indicated text with the new one throughout the document.

VS Code

• ctrl+n - Move forward through options in a drop-down panel.
• ctrl+p - Move backwards through options in a drop-down panel.
• alt+arrow keys - Move the current line up or down.
• alt+shift+arrow keys - Copy the current line up or down.

I hope you will find it useful for your projects. Honestly in my case I have notably improved the way I write code 😉