The other editors do not involve any learning if you don't learn anything about them, Vim involves a lot of learning if you learn most of its features. However to use Vim in the way you present the other editors, you don't have to learn much at all, arrow keys work, the gui version has window menus for most options.

Want to use Vim without the learning? i to insert, ESC to go back from insertion mode, arrow keys to navigate, there you are, you are basically using Vim at the level that you want people to use other editors.

If I want much more than that I'll have to learn the features and keybindings of the other editors too. Last time I checked the knowledge of how to search, split panes, switch buffers, search and replace etc. wasn't magically inserted into my brain as soon as I open my copy of VSCode or Nano.

> you have to reconfigure basic keybinds like the arrow keys

Since when do arrow keys not work in Vim by default?

Learning all of Vims features vs. learning only the minimum in other editors is not a fair comparison.

Whereas, trying to do pane-like things in vim requires Googling (more efficient in my experience than trying to use the built-in manual) and then reading some stackexchange answer that devolves into a philosophical discussion about the merits of buffers versus tabs.

Alright, that aside, when all is said and done I think a lot of people just want to edit their file. Parent comment about having to go to Google to do simple things makes a good point, and the response that "actually, I think having to read a bunch of troglodytes arguing with each other on Stack Overflow is an important part of the experience" is the kind of thing that makes it hard for everyone else to take vim fanatics seriously.

Soon or later you have to reach for the mouse to scroll through the browser, or change/rearrange windows, even with all the fancy Vim plug-ins.

20 years ago, this list would have had a bunch of different names on it.

20 years from now, it will be different names still.

Meanwhile, vim will still be there, and my knowledge in it built 20 years ago will be serving me still 20 years from now.

The reason someone might advocate for its adoption can lead to greater availability (this is why there's a vim mode in pretty much every other text editor). Or they think it's a better way to edit text and want others to experience it. I would love if I could edit text in everything as I do in vim because editing text in the more "intuitive" way is slow and clunky and frustrating.

I think what's more peculiar is the strange obsession people have with dumping on vim or on the people who are advocating for its use. It reads as petty and insecure.

I realize my experience is n=1, my editing needs might not by typical or generalizable, etc. But I do think it is important to push back a bit on vim boosterism.

I learned vim to, say, like, a low-moderate-ish proficiency? Basically forced myself to use it everywhere at work and home. After a few weeks of this... I went back to just vanilla IDEs/Editors.

For me, it was just a mix of not liking some stuff being handled in vim bindings and some stuff being handled by the IDE's bindings. I'm sure there's a bunch've plugins or customizations that'd smooth it over, but... vim also made me realize, I'm a pretty meat and potatoes text editing kinda guy. I like to shift lines, expand selections in a context aware way, and copy/paste. When I split panes, I do it with the mouse like a cave man. So the bulk of vims power was either lost on me, or felt like it got in the way of my minimal needs.

Also, I pretty much never ssh onto an individual machine to edit anything substantial these days, so... the selling point of having some bedrock transferable "everywhere" skill is kinda moot.

Your lack of proficiency in vim does not mean it is fundamentally slower.

> I only want to save other people the same trouble.

Pick one!

To be frank, it's annoying to go to a HN comments page and find the inevitable "popular tool x sucks because I didn't like it" comments. It seems like they're everywhere, on every link about every tool or product on HN. It's a buzzkill. Of course not everybody is going to like Vim. This link isn't trying to convince anybody of anything, it's just there for anybody trying to learn.

But if you don't care about that aspect, I agree with you, just stick with the boring thing that works. I don't think vim really saves me much time in the long run, but it sure makes my daily tasks more fun.

For me, the most useful part of vim is that once you learn how to use it, you can switch text editors without needing to relearn most of their shortcuts.

Jetbrains editors have by far the best implementation, but it's not there and I don't think it's possible, due to inherent lag

Last time I tried za and it didn’t work. These extensions stop right at the impedance raising point, it’s something you should know beforehand.

I don't begrudge anyone that says "wow, I don't want to take the time to research every damn feature of my IDE, just let me work", that's totally reasonable, and any of those IDEs will let you get the job done - for me - the time invested is worth it because of how much of my life is spent editing files on my computer.

One case where I find a mouse/trackpad essential: editing LaTeX documents. Being able to control-click to jump between a spot in the compiled .pdf and the corresponding source code, or the reverse, is invaluable (a feature supported in TeXShop, for instance). I realize that one can probably set up a similar system in vim. But, the appeal of vim for me was that, at the cost of learning a bunch of arcane keyboard shortcuts, I could go mouseless and as a consequence be faster. If I'm going to keep the mouse, the value proposition seems a lot worse.

Source: my experience of using vim for the last ~20 years

[0] https://nrf.com/resources/top-retailers/top-100-retailers/to...

> you have to reconfigure basic keybinds like the arrow keys "because it could break a system not used since the 1970s!"

Never had to do that on Nixos, Ubuntu, Amazon Linux, RHEL, MacOS or WSL

For my workflow with lots of context switching between code and commands, using only a terminal is more efficient use of my time. VSCode cannot do that in a way that works for me

But ignoring all of that, many use [neo]vim because they simply enjoy it. Enjoyment does not need justification

This is an artifact of the structure of the question. They're not asking what you use the most, they're asking what you use at all. Check all that apply.

So then you check Notepad++ even if you're a Linux developer who primarily uses vim or emacs but have Notepad++ on your rarely used Windows VM. You check Visual Studio or VS code if you had to contribute to an existing project which is tied to its build system, even if you avoid it whenever possible.

A quarter of all developers use vim. That's not a small number and it's not for no reason.

And you're bang on wrt nano existing everywhere vim does!

If my professional opinion, learning vim or emacs will give you a tool that will last you several lifetimes and can grow with you as you customize it to your specific needs.

This is indeed not a good reason to learn Vim nowadays indeed. Vi has more chance to be present than nano on a stripped image by the way but I digress.

For me Vim started to make sense when remote work has begun to be the new normal. VPNs make with remote desktops make everything slower. I worked in places where we had to use two VPNs at the same time. Then I saw the hacker wizard kid using vim like he was Edward Scissorhands and how much more productive he was.

Honestly if an editor doesn't have VIM mode, I don't use it.

Here's some other professional advice: people liked vim because it is modal, that means the coding process itself can be automated, scripted on, insanely fast and can completely forego mouse/touchpad input.

Vim bindings by themselves are great, but they are not fully vim, for instance, most vim bindings including this website does not support `:norm`

I suspect some variation is the same for many; it's a likely driver of demand for vim bindings (which are ubiquitous).

Even if people's daily usage of vim is much lower than their GUI-IDE of choice, the aggregate is likely far higher than reported.

> Which development environments did you use regularly over the past year, and which do you want to work with over the next year? Please check all that apply.

Pretty fair question if I've ever seen one.