How to Do 90% of What Plugins Do (With Just Vim)
Why Hacker News recommends it
HN treats it as the canonical talk for the case that vanilla Vim goes a long way and plugin dependencies are a burden.
What it is
A thoughtbot meetup talk by Max Cantor on getting most of what popular plugins provide using only built-in Vim features. It covers autocomplete, file jumping, filesystem navigation, build integration and snippets, with slides and a vimrc available.
Recommended by 10 HN commenters across 10 different months, 2016 to 2025.
What Hacker News said
Strong rec farisjarrah · 2021-11 · on “Happy birthday Vim (2020)”
The thoughtbot series on vim is great. I'm really glad I found this video early in my Vim career. I've got a very minimal vimrc as a result and just try to lean into the vim builtins [this video]
Recommends jneumann004 · 2016-11 · on “Ask HN: How to improve vim productivity and workflow?”
Use the editor that works best for you. I have used Vim every day for almost the last two years and I have learned to work very quickly inside of it. As far as plugins, if one sounds interesting or useful to you, install it. If it doesn't work out, then you can delete it later. Over the years I have tried all of the popular plugins, but I have managed to whittle it down to 4 plus a couple of language specific plugins Here are a couple of handy youtube videos Vim Navigation Commands [LINK] How to Do 90% of What Plugins Do (With Just Vim) [this video]
Recommends wodny · 2017-03 · on “A Good Vimrc (2014)”
I don't believe it's possible to have a good vimrc without really grasping some elementary concepts like movements, operators, registers, windows etc. I have recently watched all the Drew Neil's VimCasts[1] and after just a couple of hours I've realized I was missing a lot for at least 10 years. There is also quite a good presentation on YouTube by Max Cantor "How to Do 90% of What Plugins Do (With Just Vim)"[2]. Instead of treating a single vimrc as the best one it's useful to skim through dotfiles and plugins of some influential vim users like Drew Neil[3] and Tim Pope[4]. BTW VimCasts are accompanied by a book. The second edition[5] includes changes introduced by Vim 8.0. [1]: [LINK] [2]:
Recommends ultramann · 2017-11 · on “Vim plugins and config walkthrough”
I used to use bufftabline, [LINK] . I think something like it is what you're looking for? If it's not quite right for you the readme in the github repo mentions some other plugins that have similar capabilities. I really liked bufftabline when I used it. It was lightweight and did exactly what I wanted it to do, give me an immediate visual representation of the buffers I had open in a familiar tab-like format. Eventually I moved towards an even lighter weight setup. Take at look at this video is you're interested in anything like that. [this video]
Recommends epicide · 2018-06 · on “Vim plugins I use”
I like that the intro paragraph discusses the pros and cons of vanilla vs plugins. For those that want to take a look at some more vanilla approaches to some common tasks, Max Cantor has a great talk about that on YouTube [0]. [0]: [this video]
Recommends mhd · 2018-06 · on “Vim plugins I use”
Let's get this out of the way: "How to Do 90% of What Plugins Do (With Just Vim)": [this video] And if you want to see some crazy vim usage, there's always Damian Conway: [LINK]
Recommends DyslexicAtheist · 2019-03 · on “Coc.nvim – Intellisense Engine for Vim8 and Neovim”
some languages are more verbose than others. if you're dealing with `ProblemProblemFactory` type of abstraction madness and subscribe to the idea of spelling out every variable (MessageCounter instead of "cnt" etc) then this would seem handy. Maybe it's a question of mindset & philosophy. I personally prefer a minimalist but powerful editor without plugins and just rely on their internal capabilities (which granted are a learning curve). It avoids getting stuck when doing $EDITOR foo on a system you don't own and still feel at home and as fast as on your primary workspace. "How to Do 90% of What Plugins Do (With Just Vim)" : [this video]
Recommends noud · 2023-07 · on “LazyVim”
Am I the only one using vanilla vim with a minimal configuration file (<50 lines)? I set tabs to 4 spaces, put syntax highlighting on, set background to dark, add fuzzy finding, and configure netrw (default file browsing). Very easy to setup. Moreover, when I'm on a different computer and open (vanilla) vim without any configurations. I know that everything is more or less the same as my default vim environment. I think it's not that hard to learn developing in the default vim environment, with some minor tweaks. Also related, How to Do 90% of What Plugins Do (With Just Vim): [this video]