How to Do 90% of What Plugins Do (With Just Vim)

Why HN readers recommended it

HN treats it as the canonical talk for the case that vanilla Vim goes a long way and plugin dependencies are a burden.

This is a summary from the source dataset, not an endorsement by Hacker News or the video creator.

Video & recommendation details

Creator / channel

thoughtbot

Topic

vim without plugins

Format

talk

Level

intermediate

HN recommenders in dataset

10

HN mentions in dataset

14

Recommendation years in dataset

2016–2025

These counts and years describe the included Hacker News records; they are not YouTube views or the video’s publication date.

From the original HN conversations

Excerpts from the recorded comments. Follow each source for the full comment and surrounding discussion.

• The thoughtbot series on vim is great. I'm really glad I found this video early in my Vim career. I've got a very minimal vimrc as a result and just try to lean into the vim builtins [VIDEO]

• Use the editor that works best for you. I have used Vim every day for almost the last two years and I have learned to work very quickly inside of it. As far as plugins, if one sounds interesting or useful to you, install it. …

• I don't believe it's possible to have a good vimrc without really grasping some elementary concepts like movements, operators, registers, windows etc. I have recently watched all the Drew Neil's VimCasts[1] and after just a couple of hours I've realized I was missing a lot …