I agree with this very strongly. The first time I tried to learn VIM, I installed janus [1], and ended up with this monstrous, complicated system with a million plugins that I didn't understand. The mouse sort of worked, but not the way I expected it to.
I'm now sort-of trying to learn VIM again. My vimrc has about 10-15 lines in it, and I know what each one does. I have a color scheme installed, but no other plugins.
How I boosted my Vim [2] has been helpful to me in adding things to my vimrc, because Vincent Driessen is, as always, clear-minded and erudite in his description of what things do, and has good taste on a basic setup that will make sense to the modern developer. Again though, I haven't blindly pasted in all his stuff—instead, when I feel some friction with my Vim settings, I head to that article and see if there's a tweak he's listed that I can use.
I'm now sort-of trying to learn VIM again. My vimrc has about 10-15 lines in it, and I know what each one does. I have a color scheme installed, but no other plugins.
How I boosted my Vim [2] has been helpful to me in adding things to my vimrc, because Vincent Driessen is, as always, clear-minded and erudite in his description of what things do, and has good taste on a basic setup that will make sense to the modern developer. Again though, I haven't blindly pasted in all his stuff—instead, when I feel some friction with my Vim settings, I head to that article and see if there's a tweak he's listed that I can use.
[1]: https://github.com/carlhuda/janus
[2]: http://nvie.com/posts/how-i-boosted-my-vim/