From VS Code to Vim: My Six‑Year Journey to Master a Keyboard‑Driven IDE

The article tells the story of a programmer’s path from first encountering Vim at age 16, through multiple attempts and failures, to finally mastering Vim and Neovim as his primary development environment.

1. First Encounter

At 16, the author watched a video showing fast terminal coding without a mouse, which sparked fascination with Vim. Initial attempts failed: he didn’t know how to open files or exit Vim, but discovered vimtutor and began learning basic motions like hjkl.

2. Second Chance

Five years later, as a professional software engineer using IntelliJ for front‑end, mobile, and back‑end work, he felt something missing and revisited Vim, trying Neovim with a pre‑configured Astronvim setup. The experience felt cumbersome compared to IntelliJ, leading him to abandon Neovim again.

3. Last Opportunity

Two weeks later, noticing many streamers using Neovim, he tried IdeaVim, which brings Vim keybindings into IntelliJ, allowing him to keep IntelliJ’s features while navigating code with Vim motions.

4. Full Switch

After weeks of using Vim inside IntelliJ, his speed improved. He then decided to build his own Neovim configuration, learning Lua to customize it, adding LSP support, Telescope, and a Gruvbox theme. He replaced IntelliJ entirely with this minimalist Neovim setup.

5. Current State

One year later, he uses Neovim daily, typing at 200 wpm and combining Vim efficiency with fast typing. He promotes the "Unix as IDE" philosophy, uses tmux, and considers learning Vim one of the best decisions of his life.