Efficiency Once learned, Vim can significantly speed up text editing with its modal editing, keyboard shortcuts, and commands that allow for quick navigation and manipulation of text.
Lightweight Vim is a very lightweight editor, consuming minimal system resources, making it highly performant even on systems with lower specifications.
Customizability Vim is highly configurable and extensible through plugins and user-defined settings, allowing users to tailor the editor to their specific needs.
Ubiquity Vim is available on almost every Unix-like system and even on Windows, making it a ubiquitous tool that you can rely on being available in most environments.
Support for Multiple Programming Languages Vim supports a wide range of programming languages out of the box and offers syntax highlighting, which can be enhanced through plugins.
Powerful Search and Replace Vim offers robust searching and replacing functionalities, including support for regular expressions, which can be a powerful tool for developers.
Possible disadvantages
Steep Learning Curve Vim's modal editing and extensive set of commands can be daunting for new users, requiring significant time and effort to master.
Minimal Default Config The default configuration of Vim is quite minimalistic, which may necessitate additional setup and customization to meet modern development needs.
Limited GUI Vim primarily operates in a terminal, and while there are graphical variants like GVim, they are not as feature-rich or user-friendly as modern GUI editors.
Plugin Management While Vim is highly extensible, managing and configuring plugins can be cumbersome compared to more modern editors that offer integrated plugin management.
Inconsistent Behavior Across Platforms There may be inconsistencies in behavior or available features of Vim across different operating systems, which can complicate its use in certain environments.
Lack of Integrated Modern Features Vim lacks some modern IDE features like integrated debugging, advanced code introspection, and refined autocompletion, which often require third-party plugins to achieve.
Vim Emulation Evil provides a near-complete emulation of Vim’s features within Emacs, allowing users who are familiar with Vim to transition without losing their preferred keybindings and workflow.
Customizability Evil allows users to customize their configurations extensively, combining the powerful text-editing capabilities of Vim with the customizability of Emacs.
Community Support Evil has a large and active community, providing a wealth of plugins and resources to enhance the text editing experience.
Mode Integration Evil integrates smoothly with various Emacs major and minor modes, allowing users to leverage the full functionality of Emacs alongside Vim's modal editing.
Possible disadvantages
Learning Curve For users unfamiliar with Vim, the modal editing approach can introduce a significant learning curve, particularly for those accustomed to traditional text editors.
Complex Configuration Configuring Evil to fully integrate with existing Emacs setups can be complex and time-consuming, especially when customizing keybindings and behaviors.
Performance In some cases, using Evil with certain Emacs configurations or plugins may lead to performance issues, such as lag or delayed responses.
Inconsistencies There might be inconsistencies between Evil’s implementation of Vim features and the original, which could affect workflows for power users who rely on specific Vim functionalities.
Analysis
An editorial look at what each product does well and who it suits.
VimEvil
Overall verdict
Yes, Vim is a good text editor, especially for users who invest the time to learn its powerful commands and features. Its steep learning curve may be challenging initially, but once mastered, it significantly enhances productivity.
Why this product is good
Vim is considered a powerful text editor because of its efficiency and versatility. It offers extensive features, such as syntax highlighting, a robust plugin system, and support for numerous programming languages. Vim is highly configurable, enabling users to customize its environment to fit their needs. It is particularly appreciated for its speed and the ability to perform complex text manipulations using simple commands.
Recommended for
Vim is recommended for programmers, developers, and system administrators who require a highly efficient and customizable text editing experience. It is especially useful for those who work extensively in terminal environments or need a quick, resource-light text editor for remote systems.
Vim offers a variety of features like split windows, macros, and extensive customization options. It has a steep learning curve, but once you master it, you’ll be amazed at the speed and productivity it brings to your...
It’s tough to say which developers would enjoy Vim as a text editor. It’s an old system with an outdated interface. Yet, it still has the charm and powerful feature-set that the average developer needs. I would...
The entire installation process is perfectly documented on their Sourceforge page, which you must definitely pay a visit. There is another standalone Vim software, known as the gVim that brings a GUI-based interface...
Recommendations tracked on public social media and blogs since March 2021.
Vim10 mentionsEvil62 mentions
regular Vim has lua?!
Lua is quite small, encouraging distros to include it. The ubuntu gvim has, and the gvim AppImage linked from vim.org does. The default Makefile from github is set up to not include it, but you can uncomment one line there to get it.
Source:
over 3 years ago
is there a way to make highlighted text persistent after quit when using something like [match Search /\%'.line('.').'l/] ?
I've not used vimwiki locally (tho I'm old enough to remember the Vim wiki on vim.org :), but I think what you are wanting to do is extend vimwiki's syntax file. I presume it installs one at $VIMRUNTIM/syntax or or ~/.vim/syntax. If...
Source:
almost 4 years ago
Vim.org has 242k total visitors, tailwindcss.com has 4.4m, planetscale.com has 412k, jpl.nasa.gov has 2.6m, all built with Tailwind, all several years younger than Vim's website. Unnecessary comparison, unnecessary defence. It's a...
Source:
about 4 years ago
> It feels exactly like if all the emacs users in the world tried to force all vim users to use emacs. That's why emacs has a vim mode[1]. [1] - https://github.com/emacs-evil/evil.
- Source: Hacker News
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3 months ago
Switching from the Mac port Build of Emacs to the Standard NS Build
That said, the default for sis-context-hooks, which decides when it fires, is '(evil-insert-state-entry-hook), which assumes evil. If you don't use evil, this hook never gets called and it won't work, so you'll need to add hooks that...
- Source: dev.to
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5 months ago
Creating an Emacs major mode - because why not?
For multiple reasons, one of them just being curiosity, I started using Emacs. And before anyone wants to start waging the holy war of editors1, I'll put myself out there and pronounce that the one and only correct answer is: Emacs with...
- Source: dev.to
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about 2 years ago
Sublime Text is a sophisticated text editor for code, html and prose - any kind of text file. You'll love the slick user interface and extraordinary features. Fully customizable with macros, and syntax highlighting for most major languages.
Sublime Text
VS Code
Notepad++
GNU Emacs
Microsoft Visual Studio
Netbeans
IntelliJ IDEA
Vim Adventures
PicoLisp
MNT Pocket Reform
Karabiner
JOE
Spacemacs with Python layer
Zed
