I just ran across a system with ports/vim-lite updated to version 8. I now know why a coworker of mine, in the past, said using vim was like “running your fingers down a chalkboard, but for your eyes.”

In order to make vim usable for what I do, I asked the friendly folks in #bsdports on EFNet for suggestions. They suggested the following for my use, but your mileage may vary:

.vimrc
set bg=dark
set nohlsearch
set mouse=v

This seemed to turn off some of the new search features that people like in Vim 8 that caught me off guard. Hope this helps folks if you’re like me and were caught off guard by the whole thing.