Vim is a flexible and powerful editor. There is always a saying about 3 kinds of editors in the world (Vim, Emacs and the others), and there is always a war between Vim and Emacs.

I am not interested in the battle of world’s best editor, but I can convince you that although Vim comes with a bit steep learning curve, when you are used to it, you will always understand why lots of programmers choose it.

One important feature of Vim is its support for plugins. It is those plugins that enhance Vim for different uses. Here I will recommend several awesome plugins which I believe essential for Vimers.

Vundle

Vundle is a great plugin manager for Vim. It is the first ever plugin a Vimer should install. After that, Vundle takes charge of all the other plugin maintenance taaks, including downloading, installing, loading, updating, cleaning, etc. With Vundle, you only need the vimrc file when swithing computers, Vundle ensures you always getting the same configuations and plugins.

The NERD Tree

Nerdtree is a plugin for file system exploration in Vim. You can navigate through the filesystem tree with keyboard or mouse easily with the plugin. You can also bookmark certain folders or files in Nerdtree for quick access.

tagbar

Tagbar is the famous taglist alternative. Like taglist, tagbar internally uses ctags to generate at realime tags for the file, but tagbar has more support for OO languages such as c++.

a.vim

a.vim is used for quick switch between source and header. For example, when you are editing foo.c, simply type :A and you will be editing foo.h, or :AS makes a split window for editing foo.h.

To be continued…