> My vim config is empty.

That's the way to go. Unfortunately, most humans are fallible and I had to add a single line:

    inoremap <tab> <esc>

Mine is 3 lines. Background dark, shift width and tab spaces. Been like that for around 18 years.

I should probably add that. I know I have had it at some point on a different computer.

Mine was empty until the defaults changed in vim 8 and broke a lot of sensible behaviour.

as much as I enjoy my current job, I really want to learn new programming language/paradigm, or new skills to let me have a job with vanilla Vim without vimrc as my daily driver.

VIM is fantastic for editing files on servers for this reason.

mine is empty because i jump between so many different machines and my config is not there. so i have to remember them.

While I understand why you may want an empty config, at the same time, I don't get it. It's not a criticism.

I knew a guy that not only had no config, he didn't even use syntax highlighting, which I can't live without.

All of that power and configurability is there for a reason. My config is about 250 lines; a lot of that is just to have Vim operate like it's 2020 and not the 90's.

I'm not a C programmer, so I don't want /usr/include in my search path, which it is by default.

I want to ignore things I have no intention to edit, so I have

    set wildignore=*~,.DS_Store,.git,.hg,.svn,*.bmp,*.gif,*.gz,*.ico,*.jpeg,*.jpg,*.mp4,*.pdf,*.png,*.tar,*.webp,*.xz

Gotta have relative numbering while showing the absolute number for the current line:

    set number
    set relativenumber

I write a lot of HTML; having Emmet (see https://medium.com/vim-drops/be-a-html-ninja-with-emmet-for-...) enables me to write

     div#page>div.logo+ul#navigation>li*5>a <C-y>,
 

and get

   <div id="page">
        <div class="logo"></div>
        <ul id="navigation">
            <li><a href=""></a></li>
            <li><a href=""></a></li>
            <li><a href=""></a></li>
            <li><a href=""></a></li>
            <li><a href=""></a></li>
        </ul>
    </div>

Saves lots of time and keystrokes.

From .vimrc to .vim: https://vimways.org/2018/from-vimrc-to-vim/

Fabulous article that explains runtime files and why many modifications to most people's .vimrc should be in ~/.vim/.vimrc and other other runtime directories.

Lots of Vim users talk about using a minimal config because they need to access random machines that won't have their custom setup.

Or that it's some kind of badge of honor to not have any plugins, even if they could save you a ton of time and keystrokes.

Let's not forget: 1. Vim is great at remote editing, so you can use your config when updating files on servers, etc.

2. You could put your ~/.vim/.vimrc in a repo and install it anywhere you need it in like 5 minutes.

3. You could also rsync your local config to a machine if you needed to.

Of course I can use barebones Vim on some random server, but sometimes you need all the goodies with you.

The video Your Vim is only for you: (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6LPBpmkQdw8) reminds us that our Vim is just for us and if that means tricking it out so that it becomes our own custom editor, then so be it.