In the past I've written entries (such as this one) where I said that I was pretty much a Vi user, not really a Vim user, because I almost entirely stuck to Vi features. In a comment on my entry on not using and exploring Vim features, rjc reinforced this, saying that I seemed to be using vi instead of vim (and that there was nothing wrong with this). For a long time I thought this way myself, but these days this is not true any more. These days I really want Vim, not classical Vi.

The clear break point where I became a Vim user instead of a Vi user was when I started internalizing and heavily using Vim's (multi-)window commands (also). I started this as far back as 2016 (as signalled by this entry), but it took a while before I really had the window commands sink in and habits regarding them become routine (like using 'vi -o' on most occasions when I'm editing multiple files). I'm not completely fluid with Vim windows and I certainly haven't mastered all the commands, but at this point I definitely don't want to go back to not having them available.

(In my old vi days, editing multiple files was always a pain point where I would start reaching for another editor. I just really want to see more than one file on a screen at once in my usual editing style. Sometimes I want to see more than one spot in a file at the same time, too, especially when coding.)

I also very much want Vim's unlimited undo and redo, instead of a limited size undo. There are a bunch of reasons for this, but one of them is certainly that the Vi command set makes it rather easy to accidentally do a second edit operation as you're twitching around before you realize that you actually want to undo the first one. This is especially the case if your edit operation was an accident (where you hit the wrong keys by mistake or didn't realize that you weren't in insert mode), or if you've developed the habit of reflexively reflowing your current paragraph any time you pause in writing.

(There are probably other vim features I've become accustomed to without realizing it or without realizing that they're Vim features, not basic Vi features. Everywhere I use 'vi', it's really Vim.)

Although I'm now unapologetically using vim, my vimrc continues to be pretty minimal and is mostly dedicated to turning things off and setting sensible (ie modern) defaults, instead of old vi defaults. I'm unlikely to ever try to turn my vim into a superintelligent editor for reasons beyond the scope of this entry.

(I do use one Vim plugin in some of my vim setups, Aristotle Pagaltzis' vim-buftabline. I would probably be more enthused about it if I edited lots of files at once in my vim sessions, but usually I don't edit more than a couple at once.)