ST3 is awesome, I switched from that to Vim. But not because I was unhappy with ST3, just because the only way to learn Vim is to dive in and use only Vim.
I too didn't notice any latency in ST3 and I've spent a lot of time trying to recreate some of the things that I was very used to in ST3.
Saying that though, Vim just takes lots and lots of getting used to, I liken it to learning a foreign language.
Most things you just need to do the 'Vim way', for example instead of NerdTree you can just use the internal file explorer and combine it with Tim Pope's Vinegar plugin [0] (everything from Tim Pope is simply awesome). That makes opening the file explorer as easy as typing '-' and then you can bounce up directories pressing '-' again or move around the file explorer using the Vim keys. I find this just as fast as using ST's file explorer, possibly faster as it avoids the mouse.
I know fuzzy finding in Vim can be improved massively using fzf but I haven't tried it yet. I'm find it really easy just to have lots of buffers open and then to type `:b [buffer name]` you only need a partial match.
I've been writing lots about the things that confuse me about Vim coming from ST3 e.g. about the weirdness of tab pages (when all you need is buffers) [1].
Great plugins for Vim from a ST3 perspective are:
" let Vundle manage Vundle, required
Plugin 'VundleVim/Vundle.vim'
" syntax checking
Plugin 'vim-syntastic/syntastic'
" put quotes and brackets around expressions
Plugin 'tpope/vim-surround'
" use [ / ] for next / previous with lots of options
Plugin 'tpope/vim-unimpaired'
" git
Plugin 'tpope/vim-fugitive'
" store sessions that plays nicely with Airline and PDV
Plugin 'tpope/vim-obsession'
" improve the file explorer
Plugin 'tpope/vim-vinegar'
Plugin 'altercation/vim-colors-solarized'
" highlight tabs and spaces at the end of lines
Plugin 'vim-scripts/cream-showinvisibles'
" distraction free mode
Plugin 'junegunn/goyo.vim'
" autocomplete matching brackets and quotes
Plugin 'Raimondi/delimitMate'
" Airline seems to have an issue with my session saving
" @link https://github.com/vim-airline/vim-airline/issues/1505
Plugin 'vim-airline/vim-airline'
Plugin 'vim-airline/vim-airline-themes'
My reasons for using Vim were:
1. Open source
2. Cross platform (as is ST3) but also I can use it over SSH so I can take the power of my .vimrc with me
I too didn't notice any latency in ST3 and I've spent a lot of time trying to recreate some of the things that I was very used to in ST3.
Saying that though, Vim just takes lots and lots of getting used to, I liken it to learning a foreign language.
Most things you just need to do the 'Vim way', for example instead of NerdTree you can just use the internal file explorer and combine it with Tim Pope's Vinegar plugin [0] (everything from Tim Pope is simply awesome). That makes opening the file explorer as easy as typing '-' and then you can bounce up directories pressing '-' again or move around the file explorer using the Vim keys. I find this just as fast as using ST's file explorer, possibly faster as it avoids the mouse.
I know fuzzy finding in Vim can be improved massively using fzf but I haven't tried it yet. I'm find it really easy just to have lots of buffers open and then to type `:b [buffer name]` you only need a partial match.
I've been writing lots about the things that confuse me about Vim coming from ST3 e.g. about the weirdness of tab pages (when all you need is buffers) [1].
Great plugins for Vim from a ST3 perspective are:
My reasons for using Vim were:1. Open source
2. Cross platform (as is ST3) but also I can use it over SSH so I can take the power of my .vimrc with me
3. Programmable editing / Vim's 'feeling' [2]
[0]: https://github.com/tpope/vim-vinegar
[1]: https://stackoverflow.com/a/43125465/327074
[2]: http://stevelosh.com/blog/2010/09/coming-home-to-vim/#vim-s-...