Summary

The original Vi was developed to work through remote terminals when bandwidth and speed were limited. These limitations guided Vi toward establishing an efficient and deliberate editing process, which is what’s at the core of Vim—Vi Improved today.

Throughout this chapter, you’ve picked up a few (hopefully) interesting tidbits about the history of Vim and the difference between its major versions.

You’ve learned how to install and update Vim and its graphical counterpart – gVim – on every major platform (in more ways than you will ever need).

You’ve learned to configure your Vim through tinkering with .vimrc, which is something you will often go back to as you customize the editor for your own needs.

You’ve picked up the basics of working with files, moving around Vim, and making changes. Vim’s concept of text objects (letters, words, paragraphs) and composite commands (such as d2w - delete 2 words) empower precise text operations.

If there’s one thing you could take away from this chapter, it would be :help. Vim’s internal help system is incredibly detailed, and it can answer most, if not all, questions you might have, as long as you know what you’re looking for.

In the next chapter, we’ll be looking into getting more out of Vim. You’ll learn how to navigate files and get better at editing text.