Back to Articles

Vim First Steps

Jump to the cheat sheet!

First step, option A: Vim in VS Code

Start learning vim by installing this VIM extension in VS Code.

First step, option B

Install neovim, or a preconfigured setup like LunarVim (this is the one I’m currently using).

There’s a whole playlist from ThePrimeagen.

Don’t use it to code just yet

Use vim to take notes. Create a Markdown file to write down your daily to-do’s. I use it instead of Word with a plugin that allows me to preview Markdown in the browser, from where I can export a PDF.

Your first cheat sheet:

Normal mode

  • A: enters insert mode at the end of the line
  • dd: delete the whole line
  • gg and G: go to the top and the bottom of the document
  • control+u ycontrol+d: jump a few lines to the top and the bottom
  • *: mark the word under the cursor, and with n jumps to the next occurrence of the same word
  • o and O: insert new line after and before the current one
  • yy: yanks the whole line, thus yyp is for duplicating a line
  • ciw: (read it like: Change Inside Word) to delete the word under the cursor and enter insert mode. Use ci" to Change Inside Quotes, ci( to Change Inside Parenthesis, etc… You can also delete instead of change by doing di".

Select mode

  • o: jumps to the other end of the selection
  • c: to delete the current selection and enter insert mode