I used to be really good at editing code.

I was 12 when I learned VIm. I asked my dad “how do I jump to a line number in a file?”

If you open it in vi [instead of pico] I can show you. It’s just :123.

Amazing! So I learned VIm and I used it for 30 years. It’s the only editor I ever got good at.

It’s almost useless now.

Thirty years of editing code. I typed every character by hand until Co-Pilot. Instead of a single word, the ghost sometimes typed the rest of the line. I switched (with the VIm plugin, of course). Amazing!

Progressively less and less of my code was typed character by character. What used to be a macro or a clever motion became Tab Tab Tab. Coding became comments for the ghost to fill in the rest. Inevitably it was a little wrong, but I was good at editing code. AlmostRight turned to Quality with a few VIm motions. I was a lot faster this way.

Then the chat on the side got better. The end was near. It was more efficient to ask for the fix than find and edit the code. My wrists, always a little sore, savored the fewer key presses.

I typed prose into the chat.

I stopped writing code.

I stopped editing code.

I stopped using VIm.

Mastery intact and barely a reason to use it.

I still use it sometimes. I go through the VIm motions of editing code. Obsidian, bless its code, and the lovingly thorough emulation in Claude Code, are now my outlet for VIm. The skills and mastery of 30 years of hjkl and :%s/vim/claude/ have become a simple trick now that comforts my muscle memory. The motions are a permanent part of my brain, but they don’t make me better at my job. Hours of modal efficiency are no more than a few minor minutes of savings now.

That era of hand editing has ended. I wouldn’t trade my new powers for the sore wrists of the past. I was good at text editing. I still am. It feels good to have mastery. It just doesn’t matter anymore.

My mastery of VIm has become vestigial.

:wq