Why I use Vim to write

I just got out from an Emergency room from a public hospital in Chiang Mai. While I was having 7 stiches on my chin, I found it funny how the doctor hid my head and only had my chin out.

I couldn't help it but make the connection with the vim editor. A popular editor for programmers (at least some are die hard about it) and consider it light years from the others.

From movies and other scenes, I have noticed that they prefer to hide everything but from what they are operating on. I think they do it for focus reasons. That's why I love vim.

Some preach about the "God-like" combos and scripts. But I use it even when I am writing articles like this one because of the focus. In another words, you just want to tackle what is at hand and not have to worry (distracted by anything else).

I enjoy the combos as well. For instance, my favorite one to timestamp my notes is:

:r !date

I sometimes use Evernote but for the most part my go-to is vim. I have the terminal open all the time anyways.

I guess most vim users are programmers, sysadmins (... in the IT space) but I can envision it being useful to writers. You don't need any crazy scripts or configs, you can do a lot with the normal set-up. Once the habits kick in, you will be hooked.

Doctor image credit to Sasint.