add post about vim and dotfiles

content/posts/configuring-vim-and-dotfiles.md

@@ -0,0 +1,32 @@
+---
+title: "Configuring Vim and dotfiles"
+date: 2024-04-13T18:24:12+02:00
+last_modified: .Lastmod
+draft: false
+---
+
+I switched to [Neovim] some years ago and have really enjoyed working with it ever since.
+
+Flow is one of the main reasons why. 
+The key mappings and frequent use of [melodies over chords] makes typing a seamless experience: I rarely have to stop thinking to remember some keyboard shortcut. 
+Most key strokes are deeply memorized and require no effort to recall.
+And when I do struggle to remember some key mapping, Vim is easily customizable so that I can change the key mapping to something that is easier to remember for me.
+I never had that experience when working in VSCode or PyCharm, even when trying to make full use of the available shortcuts.
+
+Another big reason is the sense of mastery.
+As an engineer, I want to make the tools I use as much my own as I can: I want to be able to contribute to them, customize them to my needs, and over time become better at using them.
+Vim encouraged me to keep track of my configuration in git.
+Once I had set up [my dotfiles repository] for Vim, many more tools followed, like my zsh settings or my configuration for git itself.
+I now regularly revise and update my own developer environment, and try out new patterns whenever I noticed an annoying or repetitive task.
+I was also able to incrementally incorporate lessons and best practices I learnt from reading other people's configuration files.
+
+A third reason why I like Vim is that it's a very powerful editor, which makes navigating and editing text or code much more enjoyable.
+After short (but steep) learning phase, I felt I had a lot of really powerful tools right at my finger tips, many of which I hadn't even imagined when I was using PyCharm or VSCode.
+
+While keeping my configuration up-to-date does take time and effort, the new tricks and shortcuts I have learnt over time together with the sense of continuous progress fully make up for it.
+With popular community pre-configurations like [AstroVim], maintenance has also become a lot easier.
+
+[Neovim]: https://neovim.io/
+[melodies over chords]: https://www.barbarianmeetscoding.com/blog/boost-your-coding-fu-with-vscode-and-vim?#move-to-a-specific-character
+[my dotfiles repository]: https://github.com/mloning/dotfiles/
+[AstroVim]: https://astronvim.com/