Comment by exDM69 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by exDM69 | Hacker News Reader

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I like the fact that my vimrc is easy to deploy on new machines without having to hassle with plugins.

At one point in the past, I did have a bunch of plugins (nerdtree, fugitive, surround, nerdcommenter, etc, etc) but they weren't that great (I guess because vim's scripting facilities and UI isn't optimal for writing complex IDE-like features) and were always conflicting or otherwise a hassle.

These days I get by with vanilla vim with a conservative vimrc and I don't consider my productivity crippled. The only plugins I miss are surround.vim and a commenting plugin.

If you like to try any plugins, sure go ahead but I don't think it's a good idea for someone new to vim.

For someone new to vim, I agree. They should really get used to vanilla vim before moving on to using fancy plugins. But once you have a good grasp of vanilla vim, I don't think there's any good reason to avoid plugins.

When I install my own .vimrc on another computer, I just copy my whole ~/.vim directory over with it, and that's really all it takes to migrate. Easy.

As for plugin conflicts, I've found them to be pretty rare, and when they happen they've been easy enough to troubleshoot and then I just disable the incompatible plugin, if I can't find some other fix. The occasional incompatible plugin is no reason to avoid plugins as a whole.

> The only plugins I miss are surround.vim and a commenting plugin.

Incidentally, surround.vim and commentary.vim are also why I wouldn't want to live without plugins. Everything else is expendable.

Any idea why a surround feature isn't in vanilla Vim? It seems to follow the Vim philosophy, i.e. enacted with a command that has action and movement components.

What do you use instead of fugitive?

git on the commandline together with tig.

While I read this thread, I actually noticed that I use only a single feature out of vim-fugitive, which is the :Gw command. So I replaced vim-fugitive by https://github.com/majewsky/devenv/blob/master/vim/plugin/mi... just now.

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