Welcome to the keyboard dance world

Hello World …I would like to introduce to you “my red shoes” before we start dancing. My red shoes called VIM. VIM is text editor that can be found on the Unix, Linux, Windows or Mac. It is open source and free. So you can have the source file as well. I am using GVIM 7.1 (in windows environment).

Why I choose VIM ?

I am not going to start flame about VIM vs other editors. But I will explain base on my own expriences.

1. Insearch for the plugin.There are many good text editor that you can have, free or comercial one, on the internet. Before, I was using Emacs, JEdit and then switch to Notepad++, before I fall in love with VIM. I dont say the previous are bad, no … I am still using Notepad++ sometimes. I use Jedit sometimes. Emacs not anymore. I was falling in love with VIM since I looking for lightweight (and free) editor for Rails. After trying using Komodo, Jedit and Notepad++, I found this : Rails Plugin for VIM . It is very nice plugin for vim. And then I start thinking to learn about it.
2. It is free and open source. I am big fans of Linux as well, so I would like to use my editor on both Linux and Windows (Mac, i have none). VIM has been used by many programmers and most of then love it. I looking for the free one because I cannot pay for texteditor yet, lol … I am not live in rich countries where you can buy texteditor although it cost “cheap” (expensive for me, it tooks 2-3 working days to get one that’s about 30-40 US$). And if there is free one why I have to spend on commercial one.
3. Vim has big community that help me to learn it.  One of my favourite was on Google Groups
4. VIM is small and light. I dont want to use my memory just for text editor. I prefer to use my memory for other thing such as editing image or listening to the music.
5. Vim was made not just for one specific language. As web developer I still using PHP and Javascript for some of my project. Sometimes I use Java as well. Therefore, I am looking for the editor that can do such thing.
6. VIM has good regex search and replace support. I love using regex for common use especially for editing the text,  generating  sql  query, editing html codes and so on. Most of the editors, does support search with Regex but not many able to do replace function. I will explain about regex in another post.
7. VIM has many plugins that freely available. You could create your own plugins as well. It is fully customized.
8. You can do programming with VIM. In here i mean, you can do scripting that work with VIM. You can create tetris within your VIM as well.. Isn’t it wonderfull? I would like to learn about that since I would like to use for helping myself someday. Other editor that has ability like this is Emacs.

By these criteria, I choose to start learning vim as my “red shoes”