> At some point I think I realized that no matter how feature-rich my editor was, the main thing stopping me from writing good and fast code was _thinking_, not

> At some point I think I realized that no matter how feature-rich my editor was, the main thing stopping me from writing good and fast code was _thinking_, not configuring my text editor. Configuring my text editor isn't the main thing stopping me from writing good and fast code, but a badly configured editor does inhibit it. Working with 0 plugins is not a bad deal, but I am missing the point why I would want to. Sure I can manually comment/uncomment(nerdtree), manually write nested html(zenconding), manually balance parens when writing clojure/racket(paredit, autoclose), do a :ls and buffer switch(bufexplorer), diff swap file and on disk file and recover accordingly(recover)....etc etc. These aren't the most important things when it comes to writing good code. That doesn't mean it doesn't help. My .vimrc is 300 lines, and there is nothing in there which I don't need or which doesn't help me write fast code. These simple abbreviations save me a ton of irritation: inoremap \1 <%<Space><Space>%><Esc>2hi inoremap \2 <%=<Space><Space>%><Esc>2hi inoremap \3 {%<Space><Space>%}<Esc>2hi inoremap \4 {{<Space><Space>}}<Esc>2hi No one is contesting you can't type '{{ some_crap }}' repeatedly, but I don't see how doing that is beneficial in any way. Adding simple customization to vimrc is simple. Plugins are even simpler. Committing the shortcuts to muscle memory is not as simple. But if you really need the customization/plugin, that means you will be using it and it will become muscle memory very quickly. Thinking is the major hurdle when it comes to writing good code, but it isn't the only one. The other factors are important.