What made the difference for me was a Vim version with a project/file drawler, like the one by alloy: https://github.com/alloy/macvim
After a while I got fluent enough with vim to switch to NERDTree.
Btw, such a shame vimR (http://vimr.org/) wasn't around back when I started using vim, it looks awesome to learn vim-motions but still be able sometimes to use insert-mode and mouse if you have to get something done quickly.
In Two Simple Steps Helped Me Learn Vimalloy
macvim
C2011–2014
alloy / macvim
macvim
MacVim with file browser
11Distinct people
13Mentions
0Explicit recommenders
595GitHub stars
What to know before exploring
What it is
MacVim with file browser
GitHub
Where it is used
No documented product use was verified in the last source check.
What people are saying
No recommendation phrase was found in the indexed comments.
No classified warning is attached to this page. Read the discussions before treating silence as approval.
Also in these discussions
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This week on Hacker News
Nov 8–Nov 15 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/15/2026, 3:30:57 AM UTC.
No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.
Mentions over time
HN mentions by year13 dated mentions
Observed mentions: 2011-08-09 22:31:02 UTC to 2014-12-10 17:25:14 UTC.
Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.
View mention counts and date ranges
| Period | Start (UTC) | End (exclusive, UTC) | Mentions | Submissions | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2011 | 2011-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2012-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 6 | 1 | 5 |
| 2012 | 2012-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2013-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 4 | 0 | 4 |
| 2013 | 2013-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2 | 0 | 2 |
| 2014 | 2014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
From the project README
An excerpt from the repository, fetched Nov 13, 2026.
Read the project’s introduction
Vim - the text editor - for Mac OS X
MacVim homepage http://macvim-dev.github.io/macvim
Vim README https://github.com/macvim-dev/macvim/blob/master/README_vim.md
Read the full README on GitHub