# Vim

513 Hacker News commenters recommended Vim and 127 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 13 of 13 months; owners who said how long report a median of 20 years (55 owners). It meets the Hacker Approved badge rule.

**Verdict:** A free, lightweight terminal editor whose fast keyboard-driven editing and macros stay useful for decades on any machine, though critics cite poor defaults and cumbersome mode switching.

## Why people recommend it

- Fast keyboard-driven editing and navigation (6 comments): "Vim can absolutely lead to more efficient text editing, but I agree it has more to do with the fun journey than with typing speed." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48120784)) "Using vim/neovim is way better than I'd expect on a phone keyboard, because you can move around faster with less keypresses." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46855858)) "It makes sense even more. If you never enter "insert" mode, you still have powerful navigation and overview capabilities." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48860553))
- Powerful macros, text objects, undo (6 comments): "I generally love the power and composability of Vim text objects, but rapidly changing modes for all of the edits starts to feel cumbersome" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47286737)) "It's a bit annoying to become disciplined in text structure/regularity to have macros work flawlessly, but it's a bliss afterwards." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48123260)) "Like most editors (vim excluded) have pretty lackluster undo, transpose, case altering, and text reflowing commands." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47331173))
- Works everywhere, including SSH (5 comments): "Vim and all other non-graphical tools are great because they work in WSL, they work in linux servers and they may even work in Docker containers" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45977694)) "There's something extremely satisfying about having a dependable free software editor, available on all systems" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46501690)) "vim works also through terminal connections, which is great if you need to ssh somewhere to edit a few files" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45821668))
- Skill and muscle memory last (4 comments): "learning vim keybindings+terminal git usage while they have the most plasticity is most likely going to be a good bet for the remainder of their career" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48870442)) "I'd still rather use it than just about any other text editor, just for the simplicity of that muscle memory alone." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48118110)) "My vi became vim became neovim. The keybindings are almost the same, but they adapt to newer virtual terminals." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46239850))

## What people warn about

- Bad defaults need lots of configuration (4 comments): "the default Vim configuration can overwrite files created outside of Vim and cause autobuild systems to fail" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49877535)) "the only software I've seen people excuse for having 'bad defaults' have been things like vim, emacs, tmux." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47760228)) "7.0 without these settings was a nightmare and if one was missing it would not work the way I wanted it to" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47325423))
- Mode switching and commands feel cumbersome (2 comments): "I generally love the power and composability of Vim text objects, but rapidly changing modes for all of the edits starts to feel cumbersome" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47286737)) "it's not any better than emacs at this and you end up spending more brainpower and time issuing commands than editing" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47112202))
- Changes broke mouse behavior (2 comments): "at some point they introduced "visual mode", and it turns on when you start using the mouse, it broke the way I used the mouse copy-paste in vim" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49149572)) "Until about 2022 this was fine, then they introduced things like shifting the scrolling window, breaking mouse support" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49534023))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [Zed](https://hackerapproved.com/p/zed.md): 700 recommend
- [GNU Emacs](https://hackerapproved.com/p/emacs.md): 648 recommend
- [Visual Studio Code](https://hackerapproved.com/p/visual-studio-code.md): 485 recommend
- [Neovim](https://hackerapproved.com/p/neovim.md): 295 recommend
- [VS Code](https://hackerapproved.com/p/vs-code.md): 273 recommend

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "Vim", https://hackerapproved.com/p/vim/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).