Summary

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

In this chapter, you've learned how to install and update Vim and it's 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 (like d2w - delete 2 words) empower precise text operations.

And 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 every, question 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.