I've been using vim for 20+ years and it's been fantastically stable software for me. I have never cared about what version I am using because I've never needed to. An exception to this is that I'm now accustomed to using `:term` which came with vim 8.0 (2016?).<p>I think it's silly when colleagues point out that VS Code has vim bindings. The bindings are what I know and enjoy, but they're only half the point. I like to work with the machine, in the terminal. I don't like my text editor being a browser that pings M$, and <i>will</i> end up doing so again, eventually, even after I have to search up(!) how to disable it.<p>There's a lot of value in moving slow and not breaking things. I'm glad there are maintainers willing to carry that spirit forward.
I have to say as someone in tech, one of my "personal embarrassments" is that I still only know how to use vim on a basic level. I often see my coworkers flying through our codebases in their custom vim/nvim setups and I gotta say I get a bit jealous.<p>But every time I think about learning vim I always go back to the argument that it's just a tool to get a job done and right now, I'm very good with one particular tool (vscode) and between my dayjob and other responsibilities I just can't justify the time sink to learn vim to a level where I can be "professionally productive". For now I mainly use it for git and the occasional markdown document I need to create on the fly<p>But beyond that I really admire vim and nvmim. The fact that my coworkers can use a 30 year old text editor and extend it to support the latest and greatest LLM's and language servers is just mental to me.<p>I hope Bram is up in heaven right now, teaching god how to quit vim.
There is often an implied criticism of "if its not under active development for features, its not good" - which I don't agree with (and obviously neither do the VIM maintainers I think)<p>Maintenance mode is a good place to be IMO. I don't think anyone looking at a codebase with this maturity should feel "why aren't there significant new feature updates".<p>Wayland, ok I can see there are things which need 'bring into the modern era' but I don't think either Wayland, or XDG represents a massive about-face or fork moment. (I don't use graphically aided editors either vi or emacs, I live in terminal emulated space)<p>The moment of fear is when it ceases to be brought into current packaging by the distributions which re-factor it. I don't see any sign of that happening either.
I love vim and I’m happy Chris stepped in to save the project, his vim CSV plugin is something I use daily. Though I really hope vim and neovim merge, I don’t see a reason for the two projects to stay separate.
Related: The State of Vim, 200 comments <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42810176">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42810176</a>
Didn’t know “the” core maintainer of vim has passed. But very nice to hear community has rallied to keep the project alive despite losing such a key person.<p>In the race to incorporate AI in everything, it has turned me away from tools such as VSCode, IntelliJ. Instead have reverted to use of vim/nvim, setting up my own development environment, customizing it to my liking with desired mappings, and enhancing with plugins on an as needed basis.<p>Even with all of my customizations, code completion is still snappy (since it’s lazily loaded), and I do feel more productive compared to GUI editors.<p>Only downside is collaboration with coworkers that have always learned to use a GUI editors. In those cases I just open up whatever text editor corp uses (most cases it’s just vscode).<p>Although for co-workers I dislike, I do love to see them struggle to use vim.
A long time ago I used an editor called Origami. It had really great folding.<p>After trying to replicate that exact folding method in many editors, the only editor that did it is vim with the kent extensions.<p>So... Thank you Bram and thank you to those who made the kent extensions.<p><a href="https://github.com/vim-scripts/Kent-Vim-Extensions">https://github.com/vim-scripts/Kent-Vim-Extensions</a>
Hate to say it but when Bram died all the energy seemed to go to Neovim. It seemed for years Neovim was just the weird fork, now it actually feels like the new Vim. And Neovim is really nice, especially with stuff like Treesitter, Mason, and the distros (I use Lazyvim myself).
<a href="https://lwn.net/Articles/1002342/" rel="nofollow">https://lwn.net/Articles/1002342/</a><p>LWN coverage of what I'm guessing is the same talk.
My usual comment on any thread touching vim, as an answer to all hypothetical comments talking about how vim never clicked :<p>Remap the Escape key to CapsLock else you will never like vim (provided you are a normal person)<p>It's the most important key and you should punctuate all your inserts with it. So it'd better not be the key that's the furthest away from your fingers. The reason that's the case is an historical accident.<p>Don't be a victim. Remap.<p>P.S : Yes, I know about people using Ctrl+[, or Ctrl+C, I know you got used to it but one gets used to anything, it does not mean it's good. A weird combination isn't great and Ctrl + C has some quirks --> <a href="https://vi.stackexchange.com/questions/25764/use-control-c-i" rel="nofollow">https://vi.stackexchange.com/questions/25764/use-control-c-i</a>...<p>P.P.S : Yes, I know about `jk` it's clever ok but my mapping is system-wide and now I enjoy Escape being at the right spot for bash, zsh, fish, gdb, firenvim vim modes at no configuration cost.
> Maintaining VIM turned out to be a full time job, though the community has stepped in to help.<p>I think if you sneakily put me on Vim 7.5, I might not notice.
vim is stable and consistent. I vendor what plugins I do use with git submodules and everything just works for years and years.<p>LSP integration works as well as a given language engine has implemented it. I’ve got an autocmd group that automatically binds keys if that language’s corresponding LSP compiler is on my system. So with something like Rust or Go, I open the file and just go (no pun intended).<p>When I am trying out a new language, I just add a few configuration lines to my vimrc and all the bindings work automatically.<p>For non-LSP langs (or those with heavy servers) I use good ol’ ctags and grep, which is my preference anyway.<p>vim has been rock-solid for a while now and I can count on it not to break (or to break my configs!). I think very carefully about my workflows over time and deliberately configure the editor for exactly how I actually use it.