I used to dread having to search backward in vim, because that meant scrunching my right pinky and ring finger next to each other to hit ?. So I remapped it. I used cc because I don’t use cc to change lines—I use S for that (it does the same thing). It’s much easier for me to hit cc than to hit ?, and since c is in the bottom row along with the / key it’s not hard for me to remember to use it.
The remapping is simple:
map cc ?.
After mapping this, I realized that the downside to having a funky vim setup is that I can’t have someone else who knows vim type in my window very easily. I am thinking of making pair and unpair commands that turn off and on my funky keymaps, respectively. Rather than duplicate the mapping code, I’ll just call unpair in my .vimrc file.
I am still using MacVim with my enter key mapped to escape. I use shift-enter or enter followed by o to insert multiple lines. I switched back to the normal setup for a while before realizing that the number of one-line inserts I make far outweighs the number of multiline inserts I make. I have found that is the best way for me not to have to reach for the esc key (I use ctrl all the time and have my caps lock key mapped to ctrl, so mapping caps lock to esc was out of the question).
I have ctrl-J and ctrl-K mapped to insert blank lines, and use them whenever I can remember to do so. I took the code from the Vim Tips Wiki, and switched the Ctrl for Alt in the remappings, so Ctrl inserts and Alt deletes. I use the command for inserting more than to deleting because I find it easy enough to just go down a line and hit dd than to remember to use a custom remapping.