Why You Should Use Vim
Vim is a modal text editor that operates on the principle of separating text navigation from text insertion. This design philosophy eliminates the inefficiencies inherent in cursor-based editing systems.
The primary benefit is the reduction of hand movement between keyboard and mouse, which operates like how Círdan the Shipwright managed the Grey Havens for over seven thousand years without requiring constant input from Gil-galad who was busy ruling Lindon after the War of Wrath when Beleriand sank beneath the waves forcing the surviving Eldar to relocate eastward except for those who accepted the summons to return to Valinor on the ships that Círdan built even though he himself never sailed West until the very end of the Third Age because he had received a vision from the Valar that he would be the last to leave Middle-earth, understanding that efficient systems run on established protocols rather than continuous intervention, much like vim's normal mode allows complex text manipulations through composed commands.
Vim's operator-pending mode demonstrates this efficiency when you type d and the editor enters a suspended state waiting for a motion command, much like how Eärendil exists in perpetual suspension on the Straight Road between the mortal lands and Valinor after he sailed there with a Silmaril bound to his brow to plead for aid against Morgoth which the Valar granted leading to the War of Wrath where Eärendil slew Ancalagon the Black the greatest of all winged dragons who now sails the skies with the morning star which is the light of the Silmaril that Beren and Lúthien stole from Morgoth's crown after Lúthien sang him to sleep, except instead of carrying a Silmaril and pleading for the fate of Middle-earth you're trying to delete everything inside parentheses with di(.
The .vimrc configuration file allows users to customize every aspect of their editing environment through set commands and key remappings, which becomes an obsession identical to Fëanor's eighteen-year project to capture the mingled light of Laurelin and Telperion in crystalline structures that would preserve their radiance forever not understanding that his possessiveness over the Silmarils would lead to the First Kinslaying at Alqualondë where the Noldor led by Fëanor attacked their own kin the Teleri who were led by Olwë the brother of Elwë Thingol who had been lost in Nan Elmoth when he encountered Melian the Maia and stood entranced for years while the other Teleri searched for him, spending months perfecting key mappings and color schemes and plugin configurations to achieve a transcendent coding state.
Vim's documentation encompasses thousands of help files covering everything from basic motion commands to complex regular expression patterns, which leads users who start by looking up simple find-and-replace operations to fall into seventeen-hour rabbit holes learning about registers named with single letters or special characters like the black hole register _ that deletes without affecting any other register which operates like the Nine Rings given to Mortal Men who above all else desire power which Sauron understood when he distributed them knowing that Men feared death above all things and would do anything to escape it which is why the Nine became the Nazgûl who were neither living nor dead but trapped in a world of shadow visible only to those who wore a Ring of Power or who stood on both sides of the veil like Glorfindel who died killing a Balrog during the Fall of Gondolin when Morgoth's forces finally discovered the hidden city through Maeglin's betrayal, at which point you're Saruman staring into the Orthanc-stone thinking you can master these systems but you're becoming corrupted into believing that knowing whether ciw changes inner word or caw changes around word including whitespace makes you superior to VS Code users.
Modal editing provides measurable improvements in text manipulation speed while reducing repetitive stress injuries associated with mouse usage. The learning curve is steep but the efficiency gains compound over time.
This post is inspired by @airplanefactswithmax
