Vim

Long-term owners

vim/emacs and unix command line in general are skills you can invest in that stay relevant for 40+ years

Jun 2026 · comment

What hackers pick instead

• ZedA fast, native Rust code editor that feels far more responsive and lighter on memory than VS Code, with optional AI agent features; expect rough edges and missing polish.700recommend
• GNU EmacsLong-time users praise Emacs as a deeply programmable Lisp environment you can reshape endlessly, with excellent built-in help, but it takes heavy configuration and its defaults feel dated.648recommend
• Visual Studio CodeA free editor with a huge extension ecosystem that works the same on every OS, though critics cite extension security risks, Electron sluggishness and a constant push toward AI features.485recommend
• NeovimA keyboard-driven, extensible Vim fork with built-in LSP, Lua scripting and a strong plugin ecosystem, though critics cite breaking changes and an upgrade that deleted old Vim undo files.295recommend
• VS CodeA free, extensible editor that handles almost any language well enough out of the box, with strong extensions and remote development; critics dislike Microsoft's Copilot push and weaker specialized tooling.273recommend

Every quote

The 40 most detailed of 828 comments. Each links to the original.

1. 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

   Recommends · Jul 2026 · in “The Lindy Effect in Software”

2. 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

   Recommends · Nov 2025 · in “Google Antigravity”

3. I generally love the power and composability of Vim text objects, but rapidly changing modes for all of the edits starts to feel cumbersome

   Mixed · Mar 2026 · in “Helix: A post-modern text editor”

4. It's a bit annoying to become disciplined in text structure/regularity to have macros work flawlessly, but it's a bliss afterwards.

   Recommends · May 2026 · in “The vi family”

5. 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.

   Recommends · May 2026 · in “The vi family”

6. Persistent undo is useful, but when it's unavailable or corrupted for me it's like 'oh too bad', because it's just a convenience.

   Mixed · Sep 2026 · in “On caring for user data: NeoVim caused Vim undo files to be deleted”

7. Using vim/neovim is way better than I'd expect on a phone keyboard, because you can move around faster with less keypresses.

   Recommends · Feb 2026 · in “Termux”

8. It makes sense even more. If you never enter "insert" mode, you still have powerful navigation and overview capabilities.

   Recommends · Jul 2026 · in “How do you use Vim in the era of AI?”

9. the agentic workflow make it even more valuable to learn vim since I can fix and iterate on small details way faster

   Recommends · Feb 2026 · in “Vim 9.2 Released”

10. Like most editors (vim excluded) have pretty lackluster undo, transpose, case altering, and text reflowing commands.

    Mixed · Mar 2026 · in “Two Years of Emacs Solo: 35 Modules, Zero External Packages, and a Full Refactor”

11. If you learn and use a sharp, powerful editor and learn to type fast, the "burden" of editing and typing goes away.

    Recommends · Feb 2026 · in “Software Engineering Is Back”

12. I'd still rather use it than just about any other text editor, just for the simplicity of that muscle memory alone.

    Recommends · May 2026 · in “The vi family”

13. My vi became vim became neovim. The keybindings are almost the same, but they adapt to newer virtual terminals.

    Recommends · Dec 2025 · in “My productivity app is a never-ending .txt file (2020)”

14. There's something extremely satisfying about having a dependable free software editor, available on all systems

    Recommends · Jan 2026 · in “I switched from VSCode to Zed”

15. vim macros are an interactive scripting language specifically designed to tersely express text transformations

    Recommends · Jul 2026 · in “Good Tools Are Invisible”

16. vim works also through terminal connections, which is great if you need to ssh somewhere to edit a few files

    Recommends · Nov 2025 · in “Some software bloat is OK”

17. With vi bindings you can navigate anywhere in a document without moving your hands away from the keyboard.

    Recommends · Jul 2026 · in “How do you use Vim in the era of AI?”

18. It runs tmux and vim well, especially with a little pocket-size folding bluetooth keyboard to go with it.

    Recommends · Jan 2026 · in “Stop Doom Scrolling, Start Doom Coding: Build via the terminal from your phone”

19. Don't forget time-travel undo. If you get into a weird state with the undo tree, and g+/g- aren't helping

    Mixed · Feb 2026 · in “Undo in Vi and Its Successors”

20. vim/emacs and unix command line in general are skills you can invest in that stay relevant for 40+ years

    Recommends · Jun 2026 · in “Emacs 31 Is Around the Corner: The Changes I'm Daily Driving”

21. 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

    Criticizes · Aug 2026 · in “Developers are attached to tools because tools encode trust”

22. Until about 2022 this was fine, then they introduced things like shifting the scrolling window, breaking mouse support

    Criticizes · Sep 2026 · in “Fine, I'll build my own text editor”

23. it's not any better than emacs at this and you end up spending more brainpower and time issuing commands than editing

    Criticizes · Feb 2026 · in “Show HN: Elecxzy – A lightweight, Lisp-free Emacs-like editor in Electron”

24. the default Vim configuration can overwrite files created outside of Vim and cause autobuild systems to fail

    Criticizes · Sep 2026 · in “On caring for user data: NeoVim caused Vim undo files to be deleted”

25. Something always was broken, something was missing, something was non-optimal just below the tolerance line.

    Criticizes · Nov 2025 · in “IDEmacs: A Visual Studio Code clone for Emacs”

26. the only software I've seen people excuse for having 'bad defaults' have been things like vim, emacs, tmux.

    Criticizes · Apr 2026 · in “Make Tmux Pretty and Usable”

27. 7.0 without these settings was a nightmare and if one was missing it would not work the way I wanted it to

    Criticizes · Mar 2026 · in “EVi, a Hard-Fork of Vim”

28. It's vim with a GUI, dropdowns for nice discoverability and most importantly the shortcuts on each menu item are the commands to use it in regular vim.

    Recommends · Dec 2025 · in “Twelve Days of Shell”

29. GNU Screen + dvtm/mtm + Vim (with some minimal plugins; especially for buffer mgmt) on a large Monitor is what you need to live on the command line

    Recommends · Dec 2025 · in “Twelve Days of Shell”

30. It's the very reason I use these editors as you can have a screen fulls of opened files instead of the tabbed model of common editors.

    Recommends · Dec 2025 · in “Ask HN: What developer tool do you wish existed in 2026?”

31. I had too many Electron apps for my cheap laptop to handle and had to scale down to be able to get anything done without freezes.

    Recommends · Jan 2026 · in “I set all 376 Vim options and I'm still a fool”

32. This kind of conceptual simplicity, even though the interfacing may be rough, is good because you are solving classes of problems

    Recommends · Jul 2026 · in “Good Tools Are Invisible”

33. That's the true power of vim to me, adding standard tools from the system in keybindings and just getting it to do things MY WAY

    Recommends · Dec 2025 · in “VS Code deactivates IntelliCode in favor of the paid Copilot”

34. I'm pretty happy at the moment editing in vim invoked from psql with \e - which has been my setup for way more than a decade now

    Recommends · Apr 2026 · in “Show HN: Tusk for macOS and Gnome”

35. I think the main limitation to this that I believe is it's probably a bit slower for quick + frequent edits compared to vim.

    Mixed · Mar 2026 · in “Helix: A post-modern text editor”

36. Vim is true FOSS. No one can take it away from you, control how you use it or insist they are given ownership of your work

    Recommends · Jan 2026 · in “I set all 376 Vim options and I'm still a fool”

37. Writing models in vim with the full power of git managing history, variations, experiments just feels so much better

    Recommends · Oct 2026 · in “OpenSCAD the Programmers Solid 3D CAD Modeller”

38. As someone who's been exclusively using Vim for my development (and can definitely integrate it with AI workflows)

    Recommends · Jun 2026 · in “We Are the Last People Who Know How It Works”

39. Integration like vim's quickfix or emacs' compilation mode helps because that's where compilation errors happens.

    Recommends · Oct 2026 · in “Why Common Lisp is now the best programming language”

40. Vim and Emacs has a easier way to divide you screen so that the relevant information can be presented at once

    Recommends · Mar 2026 · in “Improved Git Diffs with Delta, Fzf and a Little Shell Scripting”