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Why I stopped using vim keybindings

growing planted 2026-03-28 108 words #tools

For fifteen years I was the vim person. I remapped every editor I used to vim. I used a vim plugin in my browser.

Last month I turned it all off.

The honest reason: I was spending mental energy on mode switching and not on the text. The modal paradigm is brilliant when your dominant activity is navigating already-written text. When your dominant activity is writing new text, it just costs you.

I write more than I navigate. I should use the tool that matches the dominant case.

I still respect the vim people. But I am no longer one of them, and the world did not end.

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