Vim: The Unexpected Savior When Nothing Else Worked

Why I think every software engineer should learn the basics of Vim.

Photo by krakenimages on Unsplash

A few moons ago, a former work colleague was to configure a critical system on a cruise ship — remotely.

But there was one major challenge: the network connection was so slow to the extent that the nano editor was unusable.

It was a real race against time. We only had a short time frame to have the system configured— I remember my friend whispering “I give up ...”.

I asked if he had tried configuring with Vim, to which he replied, “you know I can't really use Vim that much…”.

So, I took up the challenge to configure the system — using Vim, this time around.

Vims’ modal nature and its navigation keys were instrumental. We had the system configured just in time.

I learned a few valuable lessons that day.

Vim Is Ubiquitous

Vim is everywhere, and it runs really well even in harsh environments and on the slowest systems — we’re talking about systems with the bare minimum specs.

If I were you, I’d learn the basics of vim today, because you never know when you’ll encounter it. And I bet you will.