Fast Typing: vi

vi isn’t good because it “doesn’t use the mouse” or because its “modal” or because its “a command line program” These attributes are all helpful (especially to prevent Repetitive Stress Injury), but they miss the point. vi is good because it has a broad, composable text editing vocabulary, supports macros, and sed commands.

In this tutorial, we’re going to discuss how to use vi to type faster. We’ll discuss everything you need to know in 15 minutes or less.

First, install vi everywhere

Whether you’re learning vi or you’ve used vi for a while, the first thing you should do is enable yourself to use vi in as many programs as possible. You should install vi mode for your IDE, shell, git, and web browser.

IDE

VS Code

Sublime

Notepad++ used to have ViSimulator, but it’s been abandoned. Try it at your own risk.

IntelliJ and Android Studio

Eclipse

Bash

Add this to your .bashrc to get vi mode in your bash terminal.

set -o vi

The one difference between this and normal vi is that bash starts in insert mode,…