Sam text editor
Shares rank 47 of 56 text editors by recommenders
Fans of Rob Pike's editor praise its elegant design and structural regular expressions; no critical comments were recorded.
Fans of Rob Pike's editor praise its elegant design and structural regular expressions; no critical comments were recorded.
5 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 5
- criticize it
- 0
- approval share
- 100%
Recommended in 4 of 13 months
- November 2025: not recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: not recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: not recommended
- May 2026: not recommended
- June 2026: not recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: not recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 5 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, not met.
- Nobody criticizes itNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 4 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Admirers find it elegant and lovable
“I'm starting to truly love sam”
Comment from 24 Mar 2026 in “Sed, a powerfull mini-language from the 70s” “far more elegant to my taste”
Comment from 23 Mar 2026 in “Sed, a powerfull mini-language from the 70s”
Other text editors people recommend
The four most recommended other text editors, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Zed | 700 | 430 | 62% | 13 | 6 mo57 owners | — |
| GNU Emacs | 648 | 207 | 76% | 13 | 20 yrs158 owners | Approved |
| Vim | 513 | 127 | 80% | 13 | 20 yrs55 owners | Approved |
| Visual Studio Code | 485 | 547 | 47% | 12 | 2 yrs13 owners | — |
| Sam text editorThis page | 5 | 0 | 100% | 4 | — | — |
What people said
All 6 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“I have used both editors quite a bit and did like both of them.”
“Only need ~650 tokens of system prompt for it to work. It's pretty stellar.”
“it can solve complex tasks more simply by just running it a few times”
“I'm starting to truly love sam”
“far more elegant to my taste”
“Rob Pike's "Structural Regular Expressions", the kind implemented in the Sam text editor, would also have eased finding the problem raw text.”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.