Boost Your Coding Speed: Essential Vim Tips for Beginners

Vim is a popular editor for developers; by configuring commands and shortcuts you can work faster. This article provides beginner-friendly Vim tips to improve efficiency.

1. Configure .vimrc

When I first used Vim I wasted time on indentation; you can modify .vimrc to enable line numbers, auto‑indentation, syntax highlighting, etc.

Create a .vimrc in your home directory and add the following settings:

set number
set autoindent
set nowrap

2. Exit without closing terminal

Saving and quitting is easy: press ESC to enter normal mode, type :wq to write and quit.

:wq

To quit without saving, press ESC, then :q!.

:q!

3. Delete lines

Instead of using Backspace, use normal mode commands:

dd          # delete current line
5dd         # delete 5 lines starting from current line
dG          # delete from current line to end of file

4. Copy and paste

To copy a line or a block of code:

Press ESC, move cursor to start of desired text, press V to select line (or extend selection), press y to copy or d to cut, move cursor to target location, press p to paste after cursor or P before.

5. Undo and redo

In normal mode, press u to undo and Ctrl+r to redo.

6. Commenting code

To comment lines:

Press Ctrl+v to enter visual block mode, move cursor to select column, press I, type comment symbol (e.g., #), then ESC.

To uncomment:

Press Ctrl+v, select the comment characters, press d or x to delete them.

7. Search

Enter / followed by the search term and press Enter. Use n for next match, N for previous.

/word-to-be-searched

8. Read external file into Vim

Use :read followed by filename.

:read readme.md

9. Read command output into Vim

Use :read !command to insert command output.

:read !ls -l

10. Jump to last edit

Press g; in normal mode to return to the position of the last change.

11. Move to top or bottom of file

Press gg to go to the top, G to go to the bottom.