Ask HN: How many people actually use Vim?

5 points by lucas_v 4 years ago | 12 comments

Vim is often said to be the "best" text editor for speed and usability, but is this actually a viable solution? I suspect that there is a silent majority that uses VSCode or some other easier-to-use GUI product.

fhaldridge7 4 years ago |

I use vim for all my editing tasks.

But that being said, the people behind Go do a survey once a year where they ask about what editors people use https://go.dev/blog/survey2020-results

> VS Code remains the most preferred editor (41%), with GoLand a strong second (35%). Together these editors made up 76% of responses, and other preferences did not continue to decrease as they had in previous years.

Vim is at 14%

alwillis 4 years ago |

What continues to happen is when the next big thing in text editing shows up--Textmate, Sublime, BBEdit, and now VS Code, there are lots of those users who become disillusioned (for all kinds of reasons) and end up on Vim.

I can’t speak for them but I wanted an editor that I wouldn’t outgrow, was extensible and programmable—Vim does not disappoint.

The composability of Vim is its killer feature IMHO regardless of what’s new and shinny.

I see lots of complaints about VSCode being an Electron app and while its performance has improved a great deal over the years, it can bog down with large files, etc.

And even though I’ve been using Vim (now mostly Neovim), for 10+ years, I continue to learn about features that have been around forever but I didn’t need or care about until just recently.

One of the articles that got me started down this rabbit hole is the famous (in certain circles) "Your problem with Vim is that you don't grok vi.” essay that’s a response to a question on Stack Overflow [1].

[1]: https://gist.github.com/nifl/1178878

kappattack 4 years ago |

I use vim or vim emulation everywhere. I really miss it when I don't have it. I have not tried emacs yet because I'm just not ready to take on a new tool right now and I have a decent vimrc going that I really like. I've heard good things though.

I think it's good to be familiar with a console based text editor for those times when you just can't have a GUI editor. I end up in the console so much that I ultimately just decided to emulate vim wherever possible to keep things consistent, and I've gotten much better with vim over the years as a result. I don't think there's anything wrong with using a certain text editor though, just use whatever works for you.

noud 4 years ago |

I use vim for almost all my development. I'm using vim ranging from small projects (<10k lines) to very large projects (>10M lines). I never experienced vim to hinder me understanding large projects, nor does it slow me down. There are no features in VSCode (or equivalent) that I'm missing in vim. Actually it's the opposite: the learning curve is steep, but when I was comfortable enough with all the vim key bindings and features, development actually got faster and better using vim compared to using VSCode equivalents. It forces me to think more before I start coding.

I do need to code in VSCode sometimes when it's work related though.

lordkrandel 4 years ago |

I do and I work at http://www.github.com/odoo/odoo It is viable. I hate VSCode. Search @ThePrimeagen on Twitch, he's great and works at Netflix.

skydhash 4 years ago |

I’m good at vim and it will be probably what I use if I’m editing a script or some other project that does not require extensive tooling. But typing and navigating files are the least of my concerns these days. I’ll use whatever IDE is most suitable for the task in hands. XCode for Swift/Apple Programming, IDEA for Java/Kotlin, Android Studio for Android, VSCode for TypeScript,… But I will enable whatever VIM subset plugin/mode they have.

surrTurr 4 years ago |

I use it for quick edits or when I need to use macros. Although many Vim evangelists claim it‘s the best editor for coding, I have made the experience that VS Code is better. Vim is an extensible text editor, not an IDE. Sure, you can tweak it by adding all sorts of plugins like CoC for autocompletion, syntax highlighters etc. However, the tweaking often takes a lot of time, with the result rarely being better than an IDE.

vinyl7 4 years ago |

I use Neovim for most editing. If I feel like I need some extensions that VSCode has, I use vscode with vim bindings enabled. I even have vim bindings enabled in Obsidian. So it's not necessarily vim specifically, but the modal keybindings that I like about vim.

devKnight 4 years ago |

I use neovim on servers, and locally if I'm just editing a file. For work i use vs codium with the vim keybindings enabled. People do use it, and once you get used to it, going back to the normal way of doing things seems really slow and annoying

idontwantthis 4 years ago |

I use Vim everyday for Typescript development. I've turned it into an entire IDE with Plugins so it is equal to VSCode but faster for everything, and I can pack it all up and move it to a new computer instantly by transferring two files.

efortis 4 years ago |

For development, I use IdeaVim (a plugin for JetBrains' IDEs).

vim for shell scripts and configuring servers, firewall, nginx.conf, etc.

`set -o vi` for my shell.

MacVim or GVim to export code snippets for my blog using Syntax -> Convert to HTML

greatpostman 4 years ago |

I use vim key bindings on IntelliJ