I use vanilla vim when I have to ssh into a server and work on some config files. As such, I much prefer it to nano, and it's installed, or easily installable, on any Linux server.

For that use case, it's absolutely great. No complaints.

I spent years and years enjoying using vim for the same purpose when I was a sysadmin. I was absolutely disgusted beyond belief to find out people actually used it as their daily IDE when I became a developer.

You mean the one with syntax highlighting disabled by default?

Yeah. I actually find that no highlighting in some ways helps you understand the language better. Because you have to parse it, not rely on the highlighting to do it for you. When I was learning Rust, I spent a year writing Rust in vanilla vim which is by some accounts insane. But I did it for the uh immersion. And I’m happy with the result.

I do use Zed for working on projects when on my home turf. It’s just that I’ve sworn off wasting time configuring Vim everywhere. That too is advantageous because you have to have a much more thorough knowledge of the vim tool instead of relying on plugins to make it work for you. And vim is everywhere.

The thing is, using a plugin like ‘surround’ Is just so nice. When you’ve chosen to use a pleasant and powerful editor, I don’t see the benefit in depriving oneself of further pleasure and power.

Related prior discussions on this topic:

- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12886067 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23902124