People seem to swear by NerdTree, but I personally don't see the purpose of it. Sure it may be nice to see your file structure sometimes, but having a terminal

People seem to swear by NerdTree, but I personally don't see the purpose of it. Sure it may be nice to see your file structure sometimes, but having a terminal open or even just the actual folder window open solves that. Everything else can be done with the built-in :Ex command, which lets you navigate to open files, create new files, rename, delete, mostly everything you want. As for other plug-ins, there are a few I would recommend (can you tell I'm a Tim Pope fan?): - vim-commentary: Gives bindings for commenting out code quickly: https://github.com/tpope/vim-commentary https://github.com/tpope/vim-commentary - vim-surround: Easily surround selected text with symbols: https://github.com/tpope/vim-surround https://github.com/tpope/vim-surround - vim-unimpared: Adds bindings for some misc. commands, like enabling relative line numbers and spellcheck: https://github.com/tpope/vim-unimpaired https://github.com/tpope/vim-unimpaired - vim-repeat: Allows many more commands to be repeated with . : https://github.com/tpope/vim-repeat https://github.com/tpope/vim-repeat - VimCompletesMe: A much more bare-bones auto-completion tool than YouCompleteMe, hitting tab gives you matches from your previously typed text. It's also all in vimscript so it's much easier to install and manage: https://github.com/ajh17/VimCompletesMe https://github.com/ajh17/VimCompletesMe - Pathogen: A plug-in manager, if you can call it that. It simply re-adjusts the file paths so you can centralize your plugin directory. Some plug-in managers will auto-update, but I never liked that, just run git pull if you wish to update a plugin: https://github.com/tpope/vim-pathogen https://github.com/tpope/vim-pathogen There are some other cosmetic ones I like as well, like airline, and vim-highlightyank, but that's a personal preference.