{"slug": "vim", "name": "Vim", "category": "editors", "category_name": "Editors and IDEs", "description": "Modal, keyboard-driven terminal text editor descended from vi, with GUI variants like MacVim.", "recommenders": 61, "commenters": 131, "warners": 6, "score": 67.068, "rising": 0.62, "first": "2025-11-01", "latest": "2026-10-31", "why": "HN commenters like Vim for keybindings they can carry into nearly every editor and IDE, for long-term stability, and for terminal and SSH workflows alongside tmux.", "why_is_quote": false, "has_verdict": true, "sentiment": {"recommend": 65, "neutral": 64, "compare": 2, "warn": 6}, "spark": [2, 3, 3, 4, 7, 4, 3, 8, 14, 2, 7, 8], "listed": true, "loved": ["Bindings everywhere", "Terminal workflows"], "caveat": "Learning curve", "short_quote": "It took me a few months to go fast with Vim, but once I did, nothing compares.", "icon": false, "domain": "neovim.io", "github_repo": null, "official_url": "https://www.vim.org/", "pricing": "open source", "aliases": ["Vim", "vim"], "verdict": [{"text": "HN commenters like Vim for keybindings they can carry into nearly every editor and IDE,", "cites": [{"id": 804556737, "item_id": 50284796, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50284796", "by": "iLemming", "date": "2026-10-29", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I'm a die-hard vimmer, I use vim bindings everywhere.", "excerpt": "I don't know how long ago \"your early 30's\" was, but for me this was never a question - I'm a die-hard vimmer, I use vim bindings everywhere. It's practical, why force myself to relearn my typing with every new tool I use if I really don't have to? Emacs, as it turns out, vims much better than any other concrete vim implementation. Even though I did learn some basic Emacs vanilla bindings, I'm still a vimmer. Vimming", "context": "die-hard vimmer", "use_case": "modal editing", "switched_from": "", "story": "Emacs Turns 50"}, {"id": 777370832, "item_id": 48585677, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48585677", "by": "asimovDev", "date": "2026-06-18", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "The availability of vim emulation in majority of text editors and IDEs has been a lifesaver", "excerpt": "back in 2nd year of university I remember thinking that vim is complicated so i went with Emacs. Now after using vim for couple years , I can't imagine going to Emacs and learning it. The availability of vim emulation in majority of text editors and IDEs has been a lifesaver although the brief time I used Magit I was enamored I gotta say. I tried lazygit recently and it evoked the same feeling I had when trying Magit", "context": "", "use_case": "text editing", "switched_from": "Emacs", "story": "Emacs 31 Is Around the Corner: The Changes I'm Daily Driving"}, {"id": 781910033, "item_id": 48869377, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48869377", "by": "willtemperley", "date": "2026-07-10", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "The productivity gains with Vim commands are impressive.", "excerpt": "Vim is a bad example to use here. I certainly have no hacker-vibe pretensions, I use Xcode almost exclusively, but with the Vim key bindings which have been integrated very well. The productivity gains with Vim commands are impressive.", "context": "", "use_case": "key bindings", "switched_from": "", "story": "Good Tools Are Invisible"}]}, {"text": " for long-term stability,", "cites": [{"id": 801074704, "item_id": 50067169, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50067169", "by": "uecker", "date": "2026-10-13", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "the ones written in C are the most reliable (such as vim, bash, coreutils, terminals, X11\u00b9, ... also larger software such as gimp, blender)", "excerpt": "From all the programs I use, the ones written in C are the most reliable (such as vim, bash, coreutils, terminals, X11\u00b9, ... also larger software such as gimp, blender). Over decades I literally can't experience a single crash! \u00b9 The exception is the Nouveau driver, but without it X was also perfectly stable for me.", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "A Modern Web App in C"}, {"id": 801001088, "item_id": 50062568, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50062568", "by": "Borg3", "date": "2026-10-12", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "No need to retire it, because it just works..", "excerpt": "% vim --version VIM - Vi IMproved 5.8 (2001 May 31, compiled Jun 1 2001 23:17:28) No need to retire it, because it just works..", "context": "", "use_case": "text editing", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: What's the oldest software tool you still rely on every day?"}, {"id": 786042049, "item_id": 49127628, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49127628", "by": "uecker", "date": "2026-07-31", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "The C programs I use daily are generally very fast, very lean and very stable: Programs such as linux, terminals, shells, vim, etc.", "excerpt": "The C programs I use daily are generally very fast, very lean and very stable: Programs such as linux, terminals, shells, vim, etc.", "context": "", "use_case": "text editing", "switched_from": "", "story": "Google fixed more Chrome bugs in June than over the past two years, thanks to AI"}]}, {"text": " and for terminal and SSH workflows alongside tmux.", "cites": [{"id": 798927136, "item_id": 49932946, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49932946", "by": "jitl", "date": "2026-10-02", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "i love vim and i love vim-tmux-navigator keybinds", "excerpt": "i love vim and i love vim-tmux-navigator keybinds letting me navigate quickly between panes in my terminal: ctrl-{h,j,k,l} to switch panes. i love that tui agents fit right in among my shells and vims. i love that my setup works just as well on my machine and on any remote machine over ssh or mosh. i\u2019ve been working like this since 2012. although i did start using vscode for $DAYJOB since our devex team supports it (", "context": "Working this way since 2012", "use_case": "text editing", "switched_from": "", "story": "Pi 1.0"}, {"id": 753549248, "item_id": 47096828, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47096828", "by": "apothegm", "date": "2026-02-20", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "has come in handy almost every day since then", "excerpt": "Do you already do any work over SSH? What do you do if you need to edit any files in that context? Learning the essentials of vim was the sort of skill that for me took about 10 min per day over a couple months and has come in handy almost every day since then. Can you get by without it? I guess, if you do absolutely everything via a GUI. Or delegate all CLI work to LLMs without ever questioning or second guessing th", "context": "", "use_case": "editing files over SSH, git commits", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Is it worth learning Vim in 2026?"}, {"id": 782360368, "item_id": 48897523, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48897523", "by": "atmosx", "date": "2026-07-13", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Vim in the editor pane1, shell in pane2, agent(s) in panes3+.", "excerpt": "Coupled with tmux and tmuxinator. Vim in the editor pane1, shell in pane2, agent(s) in panes3+. I rename the pane\u2019s name to map try work done there. I rarely work with more than three agents, most of the it\u2019s just one because I spent time reviewing the changes, performing tests in the shell pane to make sure everything is as it should be. Ps. I use an the vim-ai plugin (dot files available in GitHub alongside vim con", "context": "", "use_case": "editor alongside agents", "switched_from": "", "story": "How do you use Vim in the era of AI?"}]}, {"text": " The most common caveat is the learning curve,", "cites": [{"id": 804667313, "item_id": 50291707, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50291707", "by": "shevy-java", "date": "2026-10-29", "stance": "warn", "quote": "vi/vim is too complicated for many folks", "excerpt": "Well nano pico atto ... the name makes it comparable. Why would you expect people to not draw that connection? I think the main take-away is that vi/vim is too complicated for many folks. I use nano a lot on the commandline. For quick editing it is so much more convenient than vim.", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "NetBSD adds a new text editor called atto"}, {"id": 792529872, "item_id": 49533117, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49533117", "by": "dwedge", "date": "2026-09-02", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I've tried GUIs many times (vscode, sublime, atom, zed, bbedit, intellij) but I always end up back in vim", "excerpt": "This is both the blessing and the curse of terminal based interfaces (I don't like to say TUI anymore since it makes me think of bubbletea style programs now). The curse being that there is way too much initial learning of how to use it (not that much, you can get by with half a dozen vim keys for years - I used vim for a decade before learning yank) but enough to be frustrating at first. The blessing is that once yo", "context": "", "use_case": "text editing", "switched_from": "", "story": "Fine, I'll build my own text editor"}, {"id": 758044608, "item_id": 47377788, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47377788", "by": "nunez", "date": "2026-03-14", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "It took me a few months to go fast with Vim, but once I did, nothing compares.", "excerpt": "There's an unofficial Claude Code plugin for Vim. It only does plan mode afaik. I haven't used it, but I have considered it. That said, I've been using Vim as my editor for the last ten years. The last few companies I worked for had integrations with VSCode, so I use it sometimes so that I could show those off, but nothing about it makes me want to give up my awesome Vim setup with my weird color scheme (Dalek). It t", "context": "Vim user for ten years", "use_case": "main editor", "switched_from": "", "story": "Emacs and Vim in the Age of AI"}]}, {"text": " and some find it too much setup work for use as a full code editor.", "cites": [{"id": 758007793, "item_id": 47375487, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47375487", "by": "dbacar", "date": "2026-03-14", "stance": "warn", "quote": "They are hard to setup as code editors, lots of customizations are needed and in my opinion it does not pay off.", "excerpt": "I dont know what the deal is with these editors that makes them on HN front page so frequently. In my opinion they are good text editors (used emacs for 4 years, and switched to vim nearly 10 years ago) but for coding I see them as a joke apart from some edge cases(clojure, lisp...). They are hard to setup as code editors, lots of customizations are needed and in my opinion it does not pay off.", "context": "used emacs for 4 years, vim for nearly 10", "use_case": "coding", "switched_from": "", "story": "Emacs and Vim in the Age of AI"}, {"id": 772902865, "item_id": 48306429, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48306429", "by": "ku1ik", "date": "2026-05-28", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Got into vim in 2009 and since then it's the editor I always come back to.", "excerpt": "Similar story here. Before vim I used Kate, Gedit, Eclipse, JEdit and NetBeans IDE. Got into vim in 2009 and since then it's the editor I always come back to. Neovim really gave it a new life - LSPs, Treesitter, scripting with Lua (which I suck at) and many more. Over last 15 years I had shorter and longer periods where I tried/used something else (VS Code, Emacs/Spacemacs, helix) but it's always been vim/neovim. I d", "context": "long-time vim user since 2009", "use_case": "text editing", "switched_from": "", "story": "A Love Letter to Neovim"}]}], "praise": [{"label": "Bindings everywhere", "summary": "Vim keybindings and emulation are available in most editors, IDEs and other tools, so the skills carry over.", "quotes": [{"id": 804556737, "item_id": 50284796, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50284796", "by": "iLemming", "date": "2026-10-29", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I'm a die-hard vimmer, I use vim bindings everywhere.", "excerpt": "I don't know how long ago \"your early 30's\" was, but for me this was never a question - I'm a die-hard vimmer, I use vim bindings everywhere. It's practical, why force myself to relearn my typing with every new tool I use if I really don't have to? Emacs, as it turns out, vims much better than any other concrete vim implementation. Even though I did learn some basic Emacs vanilla bindings, I'm still a vimmer. Vimming", "context": "die-hard vimmer", "use_case": "modal editing", "switched_from": "", "story": "Emacs Turns 50"}, {"id": 777370832, "item_id": 48585677, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48585677", "by": "asimovDev", "date": "2026-06-18", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "The availability of vim emulation in majority of text editors and IDEs has been a lifesaver", "excerpt": "back in 2nd year of university I remember thinking that vim is complicated so i went with Emacs. Now after using vim for couple years , I can't imagine going to Emacs and learning it. The availability of vim emulation in majority of text editors and IDEs has been a lifesaver although the brief time I used Magit I was enamored I gotta say. I tried lazygit recently and it evoked the same feeling I had when trying Magit", "context": "", "use_case": "text editing", "switched_from": "Emacs", "story": "Emacs 31 Is Around the Corner: The Changes I'm Daily Driving"}, {"id": 802067552, "item_id": 50129222, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50129222", "by": "mejutoco", "date": "2026-10-17", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Vim has plugins/extensions for all of those. Vim is a setting now.", "excerpt": "Vim has plugins/extensions for all of those. Vim is a setting now. Even Obsidian I use with vim mode (obsidian plugin).", "context": "", "use_case": "editing mode in other tools", "switched_from": "", "story": "My old job feels distant now"}]}, {"label": "Terminal workflows", "summary": "It fits into tmux-based setups next to shells and AI coding agents.", "quotes": [{"id": 782360368, "item_id": 48897523, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48897523", "by": "atmosx", "date": "2026-07-13", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Vim in the editor pane1, shell in pane2, agent(s) in panes3+.", "excerpt": "Coupled with tmux and tmuxinator. Vim in the editor pane1, shell in pane2, agent(s) in panes3+. I rename the pane\u2019s name to map try work done there. I rarely work with more than three agents, most of the it\u2019s just one because I spent time reviewing the changes, performing tests in the shell pane to make sure everything is as it should be. Ps. I use an the vim-ai plugin (dot files available in GitHub alongside vim con", "context": "", "use_case": "editor alongside agents", "switched_from": "", "story": "How do you use Vim in the era of AI?"}, {"id": 757975825, "item_id": 47373489, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47373489", "by": "igor47", "date": "2026-03-13", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I love running a tmux pane for vim", "excerpt": "Agreed on the config. I just launch a Claude code in my vimrc directory now if I want to change anything about my setup or have any questions about how to do something. Also, I love running a tmux pane for vim, and then like 4 or 5 more -- a few Claude code instances, one for the dev environment, one for interacting with jj/git or other random commands. So easy to switch between tasks. My main annoyance with my setup", "context": "", "use_case": "editing", "switched_from": "", "story": "Emacs and Vim in the Age of AI"}, {"id": 798927136, "item_id": 49932946, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49932946", "by": "jitl", "date": "2026-10-02", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "i love vim and i love vim-tmux-navigator keybinds", "excerpt": "i love vim and i love vim-tmux-navigator keybinds letting me navigate quickly between panes in my terminal: ctrl-{h,j,k,l} to switch panes. i love that tui agents fit right in among my shells and vims. i love that my setup works just as well on my machine and on any remote machine over ssh or mosh. i\u2019ve been working like this since 2012. although i did start using vscode for $DAYJOB since our devex team supports it (", "context": "Working this way since 2012", "use_case": "text editing", "switched_from": "", "story": "Pi 1.0"}]}, {"label": "Stability", "summary": "Users describe it as fast, lean and stable software that just works over many years.", "quotes": [{"id": 786042049, "item_id": 49127628, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49127628", "by": "uecker", "date": "2026-07-31", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "The C programs I use daily are generally very fast, very lean and very stable: Programs such as linux, terminals, shells, vim, etc.", "excerpt": "The C programs I use daily are generally very fast, very lean and very stable: Programs such as linux, terminals, shells, vim, etc.", "context": "", "use_case": "text editing", "switched_from": "", "story": "Google fixed more Chrome bugs in June than over the past two years, thanks to AI"}, {"id": 801074704, "item_id": 50067169, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50067169", "by": "uecker", "date": "2026-10-13", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "the ones written in C are the most reliable (such as vim, bash, coreutils, terminals, X11\u00b9, ... also larger software such as gimp, blender)", "excerpt": "From all the programs I use, the ones written in C are the most reliable (such as vim, bash, coreutils, terminals, X11\u00b9, ... also larger software such as gimp, blender). Over decades I literally can't experience a single crash! \u00b9 The exception is the Nouveau driver, but without it X was also perfectly stable for me.", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "A Modern Web App in C"}, {"id": 801001088, "item_id": 50062568, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50062568", "by": "Borg3", "date": "2026-10-12", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "No need to retire it, because it just works..", "excerpt": "% vim --version VIM - Vi IMproved 5.8 (2001 May 31, compiled Jun 1 2001 23:17:28) No need to retire it, because it just works..", "context": "", "use_case": "text editing", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: What's the oldest software tool you still rely on every day?"}]}, {"label": "Editing power", "summary": "Users single out features like visual block mode, macros and advanced undo history.", "quotes": [{"id": 784294801, "item_id": 49018425, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49018425", "by": "qiine", "date": "2026-07-23", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Visual block mode and virtual edit are such killer features of vim.", "excerpt": "Visual block mode and virtual edit are such killer features of vim. I also like plugins like https://github.com/nvim-mini/mini.move That allows you to move selected characters around; it's super useful to correct mistakes or reorder things quickly, and it's also very intuitive to make ASCII art with it!", "context": "", "use_case": "ASCII art", "switched_from": "", "story": "Making ASCII Art in Vim"}, {"id": 797893232, "item_id": 49868327, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49868327", "by": "prerok", "date": "2026-09-27", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I highly recommend getting to know it.", "excerpt": "Most apps don't have it, so you might not be used to it, but have you never wished that you could undo the changes you made after you restarted the program? Moreover, the vim history tracking is amazingly advanced. It's almost like a mini version control system. I highly recommend getting to know it.", "context": "", "use_case": "persistent undo history", "switched_from": "", "story": "On caring for user data: NeoVim caused Vim undo files to be deleted"}, {"id": 782661920, "item_id": 48916370, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48916370", "by": "bccdee", "date": "2026-07-14", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "BIG help.", "excerpt": "> a level of mastery where one deliberately \"writes\" macros (what, directly in the vimrc?) Oh it's so simple you'll kick yourself. If you save the macro to the q register, just paste from the q register and it'll print out the corresponding inputs. Copy the inputs into the w register and now you have that macro saved in a second place. Some people probably do save macros in their vimrc this way, but I use it to corre", "context": "", "use_case": "editing recorded macros", "switched_from": "", "story": "Good Tools Are Invisible"}]}, {"label": "Remote use", "summary": "It is valued for editing on headless machines, over SSH, and on clusters.", "quotes": [{"id": 753549248, "item_id": 47096828, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47096828", "by": "apothegm", "date": "2026-02-20", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "has come in handy almost every day since then", "excerpt": "Do you already do any work over SSH? What do you do if you need to edit any files in that context? Learning the essentials of vim was the sort of skill that for me took about 10 min per day over a couple months and has come in handy almost every day since then. Can you get by without it? I guess, if you do absolutely everything via a GUI. Or delegate all CLI work to LLMs without ever questioning or second guessing th", "context": "", "use_case": "editing files over SSH, git commits", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Is it worth learning Vim in 2026?"}, {"id": 802459634, "item_id": 50153727, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50153727", "by": "nater5000", "date": "2026-10-19", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "it's still my go-to when needed", "excerpt": "I agree. I remember \"getting into\" vim back in ~2018 because I was doing enough work on headless machines that having a \"proper\" text editing experience became a must. It was only through this process did I learn about tmux and what it offered. At some point, VSCode's remote features became good enough that I didn't really need vim anymore (granted, it's still my go-to when needed), but I still use tmux constantly. A", "context": "", "use_case": "editing on headless machines", "switched_from": "", "story": "Tmux and Claude Code: Sessions, Send-Keys, and the Ceiling"}, {"id": 784684400, "item_id": 49042775, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49042775", "by": "azalemeth", "date": "2026-07-24", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Most clusters I use are architected assuming you use vim and look at graphics locally. I do.", "excerpt": "Most clusters I use are architected assuming you use vim and look at graphics locally. I do. I also use img-cat. I've never liked VSCode anything.", "context": "HPC cluster user", "use_case": "editing on HPC clusters", "switched_from": "", "story": "Computational chemistry, Locally? My rant on SSH"}]}, {"label": "Lasting fluency", "summary": "Long-time users report that once learned, it stays fast and they keep coming back to it.", "quotes": [{"id": 758044608, "item_id": 47377788, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47377788", "by": "nunez", "date": "2026-03-14", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "It took me a few months to go fast with Vim, but once I did, nothing compares.", "excerpt": "There's an unofficial Claude Code plugin for Vim. It only does plan mode afaik. I haven't used it, but I have considered it. That said, I've been using Vim as my editor for the last ten years. The last few companies I worked for had integrations with VSCode, so I use it sometimes so that I could show those off, but nothing about it makes me want to give up my awesome Vim setup with my weird color scheme (Dalek). It t", "context": "Vim user for ten years", "use_case": "main editor", "switched_from": "", "story": "Emacs and Vim in the Age of AI"}, {"id": 794697488, "item_id": 49668593, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49668593", "by": "haberman", "date": "2026-09-12", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Vim is great and I have 25 years of muscle memory for it.", "excerpt": "Vim is great and I have 25 years of muscle memory for it. But I'm also interested in trying Kakoune (https://kakoune.org/why-kakoune/why-kakoune.html) -- which I understand also has a VSCode plugin called Dance (https://github.com/71/dance) -- as I've seen somewhat convincing arguments that it is a more powerful model for modal editing. Instead of \"verb object\" (eg. delete word or \"dw\"), it is \"object verb\" (eg. word", "context": "25 years of Vim use", "use_case": "text editing", "switched_from": "", "story": "Txt: A fast, keyboard-driven terminal text editor for engineers"}, {"id": 792529872, "item_id": 49533117, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49533117", "by": "dwedge", "date": "2026-09-02", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I've tried GUIs many times (vscode, sublime, atom, zed, bbedit, intellij) but I always end up back in vim", "excerpt": "This is both the blessing and the curse of terminal based interfaces (I don't like to say TUI anymore since it makes me think of bubbletea style programs now). The curse being that there is way too much initial learning of how to use it (not that much, you can get by with half a dozen vim keys for years - I used vim for a decade before learning yank) but enough to be frustrating at first. The blessing is that once yo", "context": "", "use_case": "text editing", "switched_from": "", "story": "Fine, I'll build my own text editor"}]}], "caveats": [{"label": "Learning curve", "summary": "It is considered too complicated for many people, and getting fast takes time.", "quotes": [{"id": 804667313, "item_id": 50291707, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50291707", "by": "shevy-java", "date": "2026-10-29", "stance": "warn", "quote": "vi/vim is too complicated for many folks", "excerpt": "Well nano pico atto ... the name makes it comparable. Why would you expect people to not draw that connection? I think the main take-away is that vi/vim is too complicated for many folks. I use nano a lot on the commandline. For quick editing it is so much more convenient than vim.", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "NetBSD adds a new text editor called atto"}, {"id": 792529872, "item_id": 49533117, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49533117", "by": "dwedge", "date": "2026-09-02", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I've tried GUIs many times (vscode, sublime, atom, zed, bbedit, intellij) but I always end up back in vim", "excerpt": "This is both the blessing and the curse of terminal based interfaces (I don't like to say TUI anymore since it makes me think of bubbletea style programs now). The curse being that there is way too much initial learning of how to use it (not that much, you can get by with half a dozen vim keys for years - I used vim for a decade before learning yank) but enough to be frustrating at first. The blessing is that once yo", "context": "", "use_case": "text editing", "switched_from": "", "story": "Fine, I'll build my own text editor"}, {"id": 758044608, "item_id": 47377788, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47377788", "by": "nunez", "date": "2026-03-14", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "It took me a few months to go fast with Vim, but once I did, nothing compares.", "excerpt": "There's an unofficial Claude Code plugin for Vim. It only does plan mode afaik. I haven't used it, but I have considered it. That said, I've been using Vim as my editor for the last ten years. The last few companies I worked for had integrations with VSCode, so I use it sometimes so that I could show those off, but nothing about it makes me want to give up my awesome Vim setup with my weird color scheme (Dalek). It t", "context": "Vim user for ten years", "use_case": "main editor", "switched_from": "", "story": "Emacs and Vim in the Age of AI"}]}, {"label": "Setup burden", "summary": "Some find it needs a lot of customization and config maintenance to work as a code editor.", "quotes": [{"id": 758007793, "item_id": 47375487, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47375487", "by": "dbacar", "date": "2026-03-14", "stance": "warn", "quote": "They are hard to setup as code editors, lots of customizations are needed and in my opinion it does not pay off.", "excerpt": "I dont know what the deal is with these editors that makes them on HN front page so frequently. In my opinion they are good text editors (used emacs for 4 years, and switched to vim nearly 10 years ago) but for coding I see them as a joke apart from some edge cases(clojure, lisp...). They are hard to setup as code editors, lots of customizations are needed and in my opinion it does not pay off.", "context": "used emacs for 4 years, vim for nearly 10", "use_case": "coding", "switched_from": "", "story": "Emacs and Vim in the Age of AI"}, {"id": 772902865, "item_id": 48306429, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48306429", "by": "ku1ik", "date": "2026-05-28", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Got into vim in 2009 and since then it's the editor I always come back to.", "excerpt": "Similar story here. Before vim I used Kate, Gedit, Eclipse, JEdit and NetBeans IDE. Got into vim in 2009 and since then it's the editor I always come back to. Neovim really gave it a new life - LSPs, Treesitter, scripting with Lua (which I suck at) and many more. Over last 15 years I had shorter and longer periods where I tried/used something else (VS Code, Emacs/Spacemacs, helix) but it's always been vim/neovim. I d", "context": "long-time vim user since 2009", "use_case": "text editing", "switched_from": "", "story": "A Love Letter to Neovim"}]}, {"label": "Not for everyone", "summary": "Some prefer simpler editors like nano or micro, and it is hard to ask a group to adopt a TUI.", "quotes": [{"id": 770226609, "item_id": 48139163, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48139163", "by": "lproven", "date": "2026-05-14", "stance": "warn", "quote": "I'd use any of them in preference to Vim.", "excerpt": "> When I don't have a GUI available, I use micro, nano, joe. I'd use any of them in preference to Vim. But you might find you like Tilde. https://os.ghalkes.nl/tilde/", "context": "", "use_case": "text editing", "switched_from": "", "story": "The vi family"}, {"id": 786403936, "item_id": 49150246, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49150246", "by": "kelnos", "date": "2026-08-02", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I use it, and have used it for 25-odd years", "excerpt": "I think the problem with the vi/vim example is that it's very much not for everyone. I use it, and have used it for 25-odd years, but I'm not an expert at it by any means (because I haven't taken the time to try to be), and occasionally have to look up how to do something. But I've customized it to my heart's content, and feel very productive in it. But I would not expect a large percentage of developers to want to d", "context": "25-year vi/vim user", "use_case": "text editing", "switched_from": "", "story": "Developers are attached to tools because tools encode trust"}, {"id": 770500336, "item_id": 48156271, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48156271", "by": "joeblubaugh", "date": "2026-05-15", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I love vim", "excerpt": "It\u2019s very slick, but I would be interested to know how separable the UI and the data layer are. I love vim but asking a collaborative group to all use a TUI is difficult. A local web server would be a nice alternative UI", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: Epiq \u2013 Distributed Git based issue tracker TUI"}]}, {"label": "AI integration", "summary": "Some say plugins do not give a good integrated experience with AI agents.", "quotes": [{"id": 758005569, "item_id": 47375348, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47375348", "by": "danebalia", "date": "2026-03-14", "stance": "warn", "quote": "I gave up on emacs and vim. Its like fighting bad design.", "excerpt": "I gave up on emacs and vim. Its like fighting bad design. Im long time users of both, but no plugins sufficiently provide a quality integrated experience with AI, MCP and agents. Emacs and neovim AFAIK are not designed for streaming. And with what each of them do, you can just build an IDE yourself (Claude Code). I combined with Vim bindings, spacemacs interface and built an IDE from scratch in one week with Rust. It", "context": "long time user of both", "use_case": "AI-integrated coding", "switched_from": "", "story": "Emacs and Vim in the Age of AI"}, {"id": 782360368, "item_id": 48897523, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48897523", "by": "atmosx", "date": "2026-07-13", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Vim in the editor pane1, shell in pane2, agent(s) in panes3+.", "excerpt": "Coupled with tmux and tmuxinator. Vim in the editor pane1, shell in pane2, agent(s) in panes3+. I rename the pane\u2019s name to map try work done there. I rarely work with more than three agents, most of the it\u2019s just one because I spent time reviewing the changes, performing tests in the shell pane to make sure everything is as it should be. Ps. I use an the vim-ai plugin (dot files available in GitHub alongside vim con", "context": "", "use_case": "editor alongside agents", "switched_from": "", "story": "How do you use Vim in the era of AI?"}]}, {"label": "Inconsistent emulation", "summary": "Vim emulation quality varies widely across other environments.", "quotes": [{"id": 804666515, "item_id": 50291657, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50291657", "by": "iLemming", "date": "2026-10-29", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I am a die-hard vimmer", "excerpt": "> Vim implementation quality varies wildly from environment to environment is extremely frustrating to me. I know exactly what you're talking about. I am a die-hard vimmer and used vim plugins in every editor/IDE/browser/shell/multiplexer/WM/etc. I use vim bindings system-wide. I control my music, switch between apps, swap and resize windows - all without lifting a finger from the home-row. I spent almost a decade li", "context": "die-hard vimmer", "use_case": "text editing", "switched_from": "", "story": "Emacs Turns 50"}]}, {"label": "Changed defaults", "summary": "A mouse-triggered visual mode change broke one user's copy-paste habits.", "quotes": [{"id": 786393152, "item_id": 49149572, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49149572", "by": "GuB-42", "date": "2026-08-02", "stance": "warn", "quote": "even vim is not immune.", "excerpt": "> Vim is one major exception to the automatic update problem. Except for one thing that pissed me off a great deal. I am not a true vim user, though I use it from time to time, because it is everywhere and it works through ssh. At some point they introduced \"visual mode\", and it turns on when you start using the mouse, it broke the way I used the mouse copy-paste in vim. I know I can do \"set mouse-=a\", but when I am ", "context": "occasional vim user", "use_case": "editing over ssh", "switched_from": "", "story": "Developers are attached to tools because tools encode trust"}]}], "who": [{"by": "iLemming", "context": "die-hard vimmer", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50291657", "date": "2026-10-29"}, {"by": "vuggamie", "context": "older developer (50+)", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50289296", "date": "2026-10-29"}, {"by": "jitl", "context": "Working this way since 2012", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49932946", "date": "2026-10-02"}, {"by": "sdcfgy", "context": "long-time Debian user", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49867618", "date": "2026-09-27"}, {"by": "haberman", "context": "25 years of Vim use", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49668593", "date": "2026-09-12"}, {"by": "gopalv", "context": "support rotation", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49663031", "date": "2026-09-11"}, {"by": "dmix", "context": "used Vim for a decade", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49503607", "date": "2026-08-30"}, {"by": "ghshephard", "context": "manages ~250k hosts in 42 datacenters", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49338384", "date": "2026-08-17"}, {"by": "FabCH", "context": "uses e-ink as daily driver", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49249525", "date": "2026-08-10"}, {"by": "kelnos", "context": "25-year vi/vim user", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49150246", "date": "2026-08-02"}, {"by": "azalemeth", "context": "HPC cluster user", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49042775", "date": "2026-07-24"}, {"by": "PaulHoule", "context": "long-time Unix user since 1989", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48952837", "date": "2026-07-17"}], "tags": ["for SSH and remote work", "for tmux users", "for keyboard-driven workflows", "for HPC clusters"], "use_cases": ["text editing", "code editing", "editing", "editor", "modal editing", "editing over ssh"], "compared": [{"slug": "emacs", "name": "Emacs", "co": 46, "switched_from": 4, "switched_to": 5}, {"slug": "neovim", "name": "Neovim", "co": 26, "switched_from": 1, "switched_to": 7}, {"slug": "visual-studio-code", "name": "Visual Studio Code", "co": 26, "switched_from": 2, "switched_to": 4}, {"slug": "tmux", "name": "tmux", "co": 17, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "sublime-text", "name": "Sublime Text", "co": 13, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 2}, {"slug": "helix", "name": "Helix", "co": 10, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 1}, {"slug": "claude-code", "name": "Claude Code", "co": 12, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "zed", "name": "Zed", "co": 7, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 2}], "makers": [], "threads": [{"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48858121", "title": "Good Tools Are Invisible", "mentions": 9}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47319071", "title": "Emacs and Vim in the Age of AI", "mentions": 6}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50273171", "title": "Emacs Turns 50", "mentions": 4}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49867067", "title": "On caring for user data: NeoVim caused Vim undo files to be deleted", "mentions": 4}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48859439", "title": "How do you use Vim in the era of AI?", "mentions": 4}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47015330", "title": "Vim 9.2 Released", "mentions": 4}], "sentiment_by_month": {"2025-11": {"recommend": 2, "neutral": 3}, "2025-12": {"recommend": 3, "neutral": 1}, "2026-01": {"recommend": 3, "neutral": 4}, "2026-02": {"neutral": 3, "warn": 1, "recommend": 4}, "2026-03": {"recommend": 7, "neutral": 3, "warn": 2}, "2026-04": {"recommend": 4, "neutral": 5, "compare": 1}, "2026-05": {"neutral": 2, "recommend": 3, "warn": 1}, "2026-06": {"neutral": 9, "recommend": 8}, "2026-07": {"neutral": 8, "recommend": 14}, "2026-08": {"warn": 1, "recommend": 2, "neutral": 12}, "2026-09": {"recommend": 7, "neutral": 6, "compare": 1}, "2026-10": {"recommend": 8, "neutral": 8, "warn": 1}}, "quotes": [{"id": 805095122, "item_id": 50318445, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50318445", "by": "arendtio", "date": "2026-10-31", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "Before Cursor, I used vim + tmux.", "excerpt": "I used Cursor first, tried Claude Code, but went back to Cursor. In general, I am pretty happy with Cursor, but given Elon's talent for ruining things, I am currently preparing for an exit. It is not because I don't like Cursor or have found something better, just because I see things like no OpenAI models going forward, a push for Grok, and the stuff that xAI did in the past. Before Cursor, I used vim + tmux.", "context": "", "use_case": "code editing", "switched_from": "", "story": "Backdoor in Claude Code for VS Code extension on the Cursor Marketplace"}, {"id": 804667313, "item_id": 50291707, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50291707", "by": "shevy-java", "date": "2026-10-29", "stance": "warn", "quote": "vi/vim is too complicated for many folks", "excerpt": "Well nano pico atto ... the name makes it comparable. Why would you expect people to not draw that connection? I think the main take-away is that vi/vim is too complicated for many folks. I use nano a lot on the commandline. For quick editing it is so much more convenient than vim.", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "NetBSD adds a new text editor called atto"}, {"id": 804666515, "item_id": 50291657, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50291657", "by": "iLemming", "date": "2026-10-29", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I am a die-hard vimmer", "excerpt": "> Vim implementation quality varies wildly from environment to environment is extremely frustrating to me. I know exactly what you're talking about. I am a die-hard vimmer and used vim plugins in every editor/IDE/browser/shell/multiplexer/WM/etc. I use vim bindings system-wide. I control my music, switch between apps, swap and resize windows - all without lifting a finger from the home-row. I spent almost a decade li", "context": "die-hard vimmer", "use_case": "text editing", "switched_from": "", "story": "Emacs Turns 50"}, {"id": 804628736, "item_id": 50289296, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50289296", "by": "vuggamie", "date": "2026-10-29", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I spend my day in vim and zsh", "excerpt": "As an older developer (50+) I tend to use terminal apps for my workflow: vim, ssh, git, scripts for building, and now Claude code. There are gui and web interfaces for all of this. The junior developers on my team are not comfortable with terminal apps. I spend my day in vim and zsh, but the world has moved on. On we go, up the ladder of abstraction.", "context": "older developer (50+)", "use_case": "daily editing", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Why are there not more terminal apps?"}, {"id": 804556737, "item_id": 50284796, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50284796", "by": "iLemming", "date": "2026-10-29", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I'm a die-hard vimmer, I use vim bindings everywhere.", "excerpt": "I don't know how long ago \"your early 30's\" was, but for me this was never a question - I'm a die-hard vimmer, I use vim bindings everywhere. It's practical, why force myself to relearn my typing with every new tool I use if I really don't have to? Emacs, as it turns out, vims much better than any other concrete vim implementation. Even though I did learn some basic Emacs vanilla bindings, I'm still a vimmer. Vimming", "context": "die-hard vimmer", "use_case": "modal editing", "switched_from": "", "story": "Emacs Turns 50"}, {"id": 804554833, "item_id": 50284677, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50284677", "by": "iLemming", "date": "2026-10-29", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I've been vimming since 2010, the idea of vim modality is an excellent, practical, beautiful model.", "excerpt": "> someone has made the wrong editor choice Just the other day I made this comment on the topic of \"nvim vs emacs\", I think it fits here well: > editor choice shouldn't be treated like soccer or religion Oh, I wish there was a choice here. I've been vimming since 2010, the idea of vim modality is an excellent, practical, beautiful model. It's a fantastic idea and the ideas do port. That's why I've used vim-bindings in", "context": "vimmer since 2010", "use_case": "modal editing", "switched_from": "", "story": "Emacs Turns 50"}, {"id": 804399057, "item_id": 50274941, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50274941", "by": "lopotubez", "date": "2026-10-28", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I was introduced to vim before emacs and got really comfortable with it.", "excerpt": "My biggest regret in life was that I was introduced to vim before emacs and got really comfortable with it. Did not realize that everything I was building in my vim configs to make it better was already default in emacs i.e dired, compile mode, magit, org mode, etc. If I wasn't able to multiplex with tmux I would have switched to emacs a long time ago.", "context": "", "use_case": "editing", "switched_from": "", "story": "Emacs Turns 50"}, {"id": 803085393, "item_id": 50192837, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50192837", "by": "tuvix", "date": "2026-10-22", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "Always wanted something that allowed me to use vim while viewing the markdown", "excerpt": "Just recently created an md live viewer/pdf exporter after feeling some of these same frustrations[0]. Always wanted something that allowed me to use vim while viewing the markdown exactly as it would render to pdf, kind of like overleaf. [0] https://github.com/john-marinelli/docm", "context": "", "use_case": "editing markdown", "switched_from": "", "story": "A Markdown File Should Just Open"}, {"id": 802580801, "item_id": 50161300, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50161300", "by": "SurfingAlpaca", "date": "2026-10-20", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I used to do ssh, tmux, vim for most of my work on the server", "excerpt": "Back in the day I used to do ssh, tmux, vim for most of my work on the server and sshfs for stuff where I needed my IDE. In the last 10 years I think the only thing thats changed is adding agents to the mix (and no longer needing sshfs). Some files kinda open slow on vim or screw up the syntax highlighting so I switch to nvim/helix (still evaluating both. Don\u2019t know what to pick)", "context": "", "use_case": "editing on servers", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: What's your SSH terminal workflow like?"}, {"id": 802459634, "item_id": 50153727, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50153727", "by": "nater5000", "date": "2026-10-19", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "it's still my go-to when needed", "excerpt": "I agree. I remember \"getting into\" vim back in ~2018 because I was doing enough work on headless machines that having a \"proper\" text editing experience became a must. It was only through this process did I learn about tmux and what it offered. At some point, VSCode's remote features became good enough that I didn't really need vim anymore (granted, it's still my go-to when needed), but I still use tmux constantly. A", "context": "", "use_case": "editing on headless machines", "switched_from": "", "story": "Tmux and Claude Code: Sessions, Send-Keys, and the Ceiling"}, {"id": 802344706, "item_id": 50146544, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50146544", "by": "wredcoll", "date": "2026-10-18", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I use tmux every day, vim and bash and stuff, all great, genuinely like them", "excerpt": "I can't help but feel this constant churn of \"terminal emulator but with tmux built in\" are wildly missing the point. Terminal + Tmux is great and cool but for very specific reasons. Most of those reasons involve backwards compatibility. You can view \"Terminal based UIs\" on basically anything that can, you know, emulate a terminal and that's a pretty powerful feature. Things that consume and output text, even weird m", "context": "", "use_case": "text editing", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: OmniPTY \u2013 Opinionated terminal emulator for macOS and Linux"}, {"id": 802067552, "item_id": 50129222, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50129222", "by": "mejutoco", "date": "2026-10-17", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Vim has plugins/extensions for all of those. Vim is a setting now.", "excerpt": "Vim has plugins/extensions for all of those. Vim is a setting now. Even Obsidian I use with vim mode (obsidian plugin).", "context": "", "use_case": "editing mode in other tools", "switched_from": "", "story": "My old job feels distant now"}, {"id": 801074704, "item_id": 50067169, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50067169", "by": "uecker", "date": "2026-10-13", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "the ones written in C are the most reliable (such as vim, bash, coreutils, terminals, X11\u00b9, ... also larger software such as gimp, blender)", "excerpt": "From all the programs I use, the ones written in C are the most reliable (such as vim, bash, coreutils, terminals, X11\u00b9, ... also larger software such as gimp, blender). Over decades I literally can't experience a single crash! \u00b9 The exception is the Nouveau driver, but without it X was also perfectly stable for me.", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "A Modern Web App in C"}, {"id": 801001088, "item_id": 50062568, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50062568", "by": "Borg3", "date": "2026-10-12", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "No need to retire it, because it just works..", "excerpt": "% vim --version VIM - Vi IMproved 5.8 (2001 May 31, compiled Jun 1 2001 23:17:28) No need to retire it, because it just works..", "context": "", "use_case": "text editing", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: What's the oldest software tool you still rely on every day?"}, {"id": 800289922, "item_id": 50018120, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50018120", "by": "moses-palmer", "date": "2026-10-09", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I'm a vim user after all!", "excerpt": "I have been using Linux / GNOME as my primary environment for the last 20 years, but at my current job, that was not an option, so I'm on macOS. I tried for a week to get used to the unfamiliar key bindings for text input, but then I gave up\u2014I'm a vim user after all!\u2014and found a system setting to use the bindings I am more familiar with. This was picked up by many applications, but notably _not_ by the Microsoft suit", "context": "", "use_case": "text editing", "switched_from": "", "story": "Keyboard differences between Windows and Macs"}, {"id": 799795057, "item_id": 49987191, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49987191", "by": "BobbyTables2", "date": "2026-10-07", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "semicolon for vim", "excerpt": "One thing that helped me was to avoid chords with one hand. In the past, I\u2019d twist my left thumb for a single handed ctrl-c or the right fingers for shift-; (to type a colon in vim). Similar for ctrl-a and ctrl-b. I switched to a single F12 key for tmux, semicolon for vim, and either use specialized macro keys for cut/paste or got in the habit of using two hands for them. It made an enormous difference for me.", "context": "", "use_case": "text editing", "switched_from": "", "story": "LLMs may have helped my RSI"}, {"id": 799242768, "item_id": 49952673, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49952673", "by": "tatjam", "date": "2026-10-04", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I can use vim motions more naturally than, say, move my earlobes or control my toes.", "excerpt": "This is a good take, but where does one consciousness end, and another begin? Does my consciousness extend only to the central nervous system (and peripheral nerves and such are inputs)? Or am I my brain + all nerves? What about organs, does my consciousness include my liver? Is my liver another conscious entity? Going the other way, if I'm using a computer, does my consciousness extend to the computer? I use a compu", "context": "", "use_case": "daily text editing", "switched_from": "", "story": "Religious scholars met with Anthropic"}, {"id": 798936049, "item_id": 49933503, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49933503", "by": "jasonlotito", "date": "2026-10-02", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "something that has the fluency of something like vim", "excerpt": "Most GUIs can't be navigated by a fluent keybind system. And if they do have keybinds, they are their own, and not consistent with what others use, or you can't modify them. And then there is the issue of making it hard to run multiple copies at the same time (I can't just click the app icon again to start a second copy, Juggler does solve for this though), nor can I keep two copies together side by side easily. Bein", "context": "", "use_case": "keyboard-driven text editing", "switched_from": "", "story": "Pi 1.0"}, {"id": 798927136, "item_id": 49932946, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49932946", "by": "jitl", "date": "2026-10-02", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "i love vim and i love vim-tmux-navigator keybinds", "excerpt": "i love vim and i love vim-tmux-navigator keybinds letting me navigate quickly between panes in my terminal: ctrl-{h,j,k,l} to switch panes. i love that tui agents fit right in among my shells and vims. i love that my setup works just as well on my machine and on any remote machine over ssh or mosh. i\u2019ve been working like this since 2012. although i did start using vscode for $DAYJOB since our devex team supports it (", "context": "Working this way since 2012", "use_case": "text editing", "switched_from": "", "story": "Pi 1.0"}, {"id": 798092535, "item_id": 49880783, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49880783", "by": "caidehen", "date": "2026-09-28", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I used vanilla vim with only syntax highlight and line number enabled", "excerpt": "Agree with the author. I used to write code by hand, literally hand, I used vanilla vim with only syntax highlight and line number enabled, no more. So I know I can write code. I wrote C and Python most. I used to vibe code, I am still vibe coding, multiple projects at same time. I use opus, astra, luna, deepseek v4.1 flash, I use claude code, codex, pi. I vibed a project to manage my coding agents' sub agents, skill", "context": "", "use_case": "writing code by hand", "switched_from": "", "story": "Coding is not solved"}, {"id": 797926497, "item_id": 49870406, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49870406", "by": "tombert", "date": "2026-09-27", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "Vim is good enough now.", "excerpt": "Vim is good enough now. The reason I switched to NeoVim in like 2015 is because it had async plugin support. With vanilla Vim at the time, if you had a lot of plugins it could get pretty slow and stuttery pretty quickly. Vanilla Vim added it in 2016 I think, but by that time I had already fully switched to NeoVim and it didn't seem worth it to me to switch.", "context": "", "use_case": "code editing", "switched_from": "", "story": "On caring for user data: NeoVim caused Vim undo files to be deleted"}, {"id": 797893232, "item_id": 49868327, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49868327", "by": "prerok", "date": "2026-09-27", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I highly recommend getting to know it.", "excerpt": "Most apps don't have it, so you might not be used to it, but have you never wished that you could undo the changes you made after you restarted the program? Moreover, the vim history tracking is amazingly advanced. It's almost like a mini version control system. I highly recommend getting to know it.", "context": "", "use_case": "persistent undo history", "switched_from": "", "story": "On caring for user data: NeoVim caused Vim undo files to be deleted"}, {"id": 797885825, "item_id": 49867864, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49867864", "by": "jeremyjh", "date": "2026-09-27", "stance": "compare", "quote": "To run it I type \"nvim\" instead of \"vim\".", "excerpt": "It absolutely is another program, I can tell this because it has a different name. To run it I type \"nvim\" instead of \"vim\". I use different config files to control its behavior. I install a different package on my system when I want to use it on a new computer.", "context": "", "use_case": "text editing", "switched_from": "", "story": "On caring for user data: NeoVim caused Vim undo files to be deleted"}, {"id": 797881888, "item_id": 49867618, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49867618", "by": "sdcfgy", "date": "2026-09-27", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I've used vim since the first time it appeared in Debian repos.", "excerpt": "I've used vim since the first time it appeared in Debian repos. I have been told a thousand times that NeoVim is better, more modern and solves many (conveniently never cited) issues. I just ignored it and carried on. Feeling terribly vindicated at this point as it's a feature I use regularly and have no idea that it would be an issue in NeoVim.", "context": "long-time Debian user", "use_case": "text editing", "switched_from": "", "story": "On caring for user data: NeoVim caused Vim undo files to be deleted"}, {"id": 797707108, "item_id": 49856694, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49856694", "by": "tyfighter", "date": "2026-09-26", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I know enough vim to get around, but not quickly.", "excerpt": "I use it daily as well. I know enough vim to get around, but not quickly. I never learned emacs. The Javascript/full browser engine editors (VSCode, Atom, et al.) seemed so wasteful, and Sublime did everything I needed otherwise. Except...I still love full Visual Studio for debugging, and perusing large code bases with Intellisense.", "context": "", "use_case": "editing", "switched_from": "", "story": "I am the only one who still uses sublime text daily?"}, {"id": 796502033, "item_id": 49781377, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49781377", "by": "Melonai", "date": "2026-09-20", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I often write my work reports in Vim in Markdown format", "excerpt": "On your Sheets + Gemini integration point, I've genuinely tried to give the Gemini integration into Google Docs & Google Sheets a chance. It is so incompetent that it is fully useless to me. I have not gotten a single correct solution each time I tried to use it, even something I consider table stakes. I often write my work reports in Vim in Markdown format, but they need to go to the corporate Google space. No matte", "context": "", "use_case": "writing work reports", "switched_from": "", "story": "AX \u2013 Google\u2019s Open Agentic Orchestrator"}, {"id": 795455041, "item_id": 49715940, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49715940", "by": "tambourine_man", "date": "2026-09-15", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "regular MacVim/Vim is already awesome", "excerpt": "Another shout-out for MacVim. My favorite editor for years, I use it in conjunction with Vim in the terminal. I\u2019ve been trying to move to NeoVim but can never find the time. And regular MacVim/Vim is already awesome.", "context": "", "use_case": "terminal editing", "switched_from": "", "story": "Leaving Linux"}, {"id": 794747602, "item_id": 49671725, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49671725", "by": "ghthor", "date": "2026-09-12", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Vim skills stay useful for editing the prompts/module structure/fixing slop code during review", "excerpt": "I personally went through the authors dilemma but came out different. I personally don\u2019t care for the writing by hand, but absolutely do read every line produced by AI, because I take pride it a well designed and easy to understand system; well designed abstractions. I\u2019m able to build better and easier to understand software (with better tests!) then I ever was before. AI is a great editor; I can finally do all the r", "context": "", "use_case": "editing and code review", "switched_from": "", "story": "Fuck it, make it anyway"}, {"id": 794697488, "item_id": 49668593, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49668593", "by": "haberman", "date": "2026-09-12", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Vim is great and I have 25 years of muscle memory for it.", "excerpt": "Vim is great and I have 25 years of muscle memory for it. But I'm also interested in trying Kakoune (https://kakoune.org/why-kakoune/why-kakoune.html) -- which I understand also has a VSCode plugin called Dance (https://github.com/71/dance) -- as I've seen somewhat convincing arguments that it is a more powerful model for modal editing. Instead of \"verb object\" (eg. delete word or \"dw\"), it is \"object verb\" (eg. word", "context": "25 years of Vim use", "use_case": "text editing", "switched_from": "", "story": "Txt: A fast, keyboard-driven terminal text editor for engineers"}, {"id": 794675136, "item_id": 49667196, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49667196", "by": "iLemming", "date": "2026-09-12", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "What I love about Vim and Emacs is that they taught me humility.", "excerpt": "Buddy, I did. I did. And I can rant for a quite a while for why the opinions there have jack squat of sound reasoning. On [almost] every single point there. What I love about Vim and Emacs is that they taught me humility. I am grateful to my younger self for forcing me to learn them, deeply. They cut my enormously inflated hubris down to size, and I believe they made me not only a better programmer but a better perso", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: Toast, a by default in-terminal IDE"}, {"id": 794608497, "item_id": 49663031, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49663031", "by": "gopalv", "date": "2026-09-11", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I eventually switched to vim but that had to do with needing to ssh into 100k+ machines", "excerpt": "The \"Emacs doesn't have a file-tree\" is when I stopped short and wondered what this person's background is in IDEs. My emacs days are 1999 during my \"functional or get out\" phase, but my .emacs had close to 4000 lines in it, including xterm mouse support, a clone of midnight commander + sftp to a wehbost and deep integration with ctags/cscope/c++filt. There was even a line by line debugger with custom .gdbinit comman", "context": "support rotation", "use_case": "editing over ssh", "switched_from": "Emacs", "story": "Show HN: Toast, a by default in-terminal IDE"}, {"id": 793002528, "item_id": 49562658, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49562658", "by": "anitil", "date": "2026-09-04", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "All the writing, all the code was done by me, by hand, in vim.", "excerpt": "Hi HN, I recently solved the Jane Street reverse engineering challenge [0], and I wrote a blog post on how I reached the answer. It's a moderately technical and (hopefully) entertaining run through of the process. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed doing the challenge (though, as you'll read, it was also quite a frustrating process). My github is on the post if you were interested in seeing a bit more i", "context": "", "use_case": "writing code", "switched_from": "", "story": "Solving the Jane Street reverse engineering challenge"}, {"id": 792529872, "item_id": 49533117, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49533117", "by": "dwedge", "date": "2026-09-02", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I've tried GUIs many times (vscode, sublime, atom, zed, bbedit, intellij) but I always end up back in vim", "excerpt": "This is both the blessing and the curse of terminal based interfaces (I don't like to say TUI anymore since it makes me think of bubbletea style programs now). The curse being that there is way too much initial learning of how to use it (not that much, you can get by with half a dozen vim keys for years - I used vim for a decade before learning yank) but enough to be frustrating at first. The blessing is that once yo", "context": "", "use_case": "text editing", "switched_from": "", "story": "Fine, I'll build my own text editor"}, {"id": 792145393, "item_id": 49509087, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49509087", "by": "aos", "date": "2026-08-31", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I built this monochrome and low-contrast simple colorscheme for vim", "excerpt": "I decided a few years back to forego color all-together in my syntax highlighting because it was always more distracting than helpful. I built this monochrome and low-contrast simple colorscheme for vim and I\u2019ve been using it since. Haven\u2019t missed colors at all. https://github.com/aos/vim-ascetic", "context": "", "use_case": "code editing", "switched_from": "", "story": "Highlighting My Code Based on How Much I Care"}, {"id": 792057714, "item_id": 49503607, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49503607", "by": "dmix", "date": "2026-08-30", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "the constant tweaking and changing things drives you mad after a while", "excerpt": "> No need to use a whole distribution with 1000 other poor decisions made for you. I used Vim for a decade (and Linux for much of that time) and the constant tweaking and changing things drives you mad after a while. The more you invent it yourself the more it changes. This is why I prefer MacOS+VSCode these days, which comes with good defaults and simpler VIM-style bindings. Omarchy sounds like those popular vim con", "context": "used Vim for a decade", "use_case": "code editing", "switched_from": "", "story": "Omarchy: Any User Process Can Escalate to Root"}, {"id": 791836976, "item_id": 49489811, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49489811", "by": "asQuirreL", "date": "2026-08-29", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I use [digraph]s in (neo)vim", "excerpt": "It does, yes. It's a reasonable trade-off for me becaues it's rare that I need to do that and if I do, I use [digraph]s in (neo)vim. The alternatives are usually more disruptive for me, (using Cmd as Meta shadows way more commonly used OS-level shortcuts, using Esc as Meta shadows Escape in Vim, and other TUIs). [digraph]: https://neovim.io/doc/user/digraph/", "context": "", "use_case": "typing Unicode characters", "switched_from": "", "story": "e is a customizable self-aware Emacs-like editor written in Chez Scheme"}, {"id": 791291537, "item_id": 49455721, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49455721", "by": "matheusmoreira", "date": "2026-08-26", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I use vim to write code", "excerpt": "Android phone with termux and all the usual Linux tools. I use vim to write code, and I type with the touch screen. Not exactly peak ergonomics, but it works. For me, ability to code while lying down comfortably beats having a physical keyboard and bigger screen. Set up wireguard in my router and now I've got remote access into my LAN. My laptop has essentially become a Linux server. I just ssh in from the phone and ", "context": "", "use_case": "writing code", "switched_from": "", "story": "New Mac Studio with M5 Max and M5 Ultra"}, {"id": 790420993, "item_id": 49401312, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49401312", "by": "mihaic", "date": "2026-08-22", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I'm fine to use vim over ssh into a server", "excerpt": "The people that keep arguing for TUIs for everything seem like religious fundamentalists that can't be convinced with any argument that user interfaces should be about the user, and need to adapt to the task at hand. Every time I use Claude Code, I'm wondering why the hell I'm regressing to the level of a machine. I paste an image that I want fixed, and I don't see the preview of it. I can't cut or edit text somewher", "context": "", "use_case": "editing over ssh", "switched_from": "", "story": "Stop Making TUIs"}, {"id": 790285171, "item_id": 49392823, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49392823", "by": "solid_fuel", "date": "2026-08-21", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "they have switched to Kate or Vim", "excerpt": "> Even if they're producing code by hand, surely they have LLM helpers by now. Nah. Most of my coworkers got so annoyed by VS Code injecting copilot and other \"helpers\" that they have switched to Kate or Vim. There are still a lot of places that value engineering excellence, and plenty of people who value doing the actual work and knowing that it is correct, instead of delegating to an LLM and hoping.", "context": "", "use_case": "code editing", "switched_from": "VS Code", "story": "Bun 1.4"}, {"id": 789414144, "item_id": 49338384, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49338384", "by": "ghshephard", "date": "2026-08-17", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "vim ~/.ssh/config", "excerpt": "So, I have this which I use about once a day: vis () { vim ~/.ssh/config } But - we have around 250k hosts in about 42 datacenters, some of them going back 8+ years, built by different teams - not everything has been standardized - and : $ wc -l ~/.ssh/config 268 /home/shephard/.ssh/config has lots and lots of weird IP mappings to ssh-keys that is just gross, and not something I would want to expose others to (mostly", "context": "manages ~250k hosts in 42 datacenters", "use_case": "editing ssh config", "switched_from": "", "story": "OpenSSH 10.5 released, AI fixes now welcome"}, {"id": 786042049, "item_id": 49127628, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49127628", "by": "uecker", "date": "2026-07-31", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "The C programs I use daily are generally very fast, very lean and very stable: Programs such as linux, terminals, shells, vim, etc.", "excerpt": "The C programs I use daily are generally very fast, very lean and very stable: Programs such as linux, terminals, shells, vim, etc.", "context": "", "use_case": "text editing", "switched_from": "", "story": "Google fixed more Chrome bugs in June than over the past two years, thanks to AI"}, {"id": 782360368, "item_id": 48897523, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48897523", "by": "atmosx", "date": "2026-07-13", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Vim in the editor pane1, shell in pane2, agent(s) in panes3+.", "excerpt": "Coupled with tmux and tmuxinator. Vim in the editor pane1, shell in pane2, agent(s) in panes3+. I rename the pane\u2019s name to map try work done there. I rarely work with more than three agents, most of the it\u2019s just one because I spent time reviewing the changes, performing tests in the shell pane to make sure everything is as it should be. Ps. I use an the vim-ai plugin (dot files available in GitHub alongside vim con", "context": "", "use_case": "editor alongside agents", "switched_from": "", "story": "How do you use Vim in the era of AI?"}, {"id": 781910033, "item_id": 48869377, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48869377", "by": "willtemperley", "date": "2026-07-10", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "The productivity gains with Vim commands are impressive.", "excerpt": "Vim is a bad example to use here. I certainly have no hacker-vibe pretensions, I use Xcode almost exclusively, but with the Vim key bindings which have been integrated very well. The productivity gains with Vim commands are impressive.", "context": "", "use_case": "key bindings", "switched_from": "", "story": "Good Tools Are Invisible"}, {"id": 777370832, "item_id": 48585677, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48585677", "by": "asimovDev", "date": "2026-06-18", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "The availability of vim emulation in majority of text editors and IDEs has been a lifesaver", "excerpt": "back in 2nd year of university I remember thinking that vim is complicated so i went with Emacs. Now after using vim for couple years , I can't imagine going to Emacs and learning it. The availability of vim emulation in majority of text editors and IDEs has been a lifesaver although the brief time I used Magit I was enamored I gotta say. I tried lazygit recently and it evoked the same feeling I had when trying Magit", "context": "", "use_case": "text editing", "switched_from": "Emacs", "story": "Emacs 31 Is Around the Corner: The Changes I'm Daily Driving"}, {"id": 772902865, "item_id": 48306429, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48306429", "by": "ku1ik", "date": "2026-05-28", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Got into vim in 2009 and since then it's the editor I always come back to.", "excerpt": "Similar story here. Before vim I used Kate, Gedit, Eclipse, JEdit and NetBeans IDE. Got into vim in 2009 and since then it's the editor I always come back to. Neovim really gave it a new life - LSPs, Treesitter, scripting with Lua (which I suck at) and many more. Over last 15 years I had shorter and longer periods where I tried/used something else (VS Code, Emacs/Spacemacs, helix) but it's always been vim/neovim. I d", "context": "long-time vim user since 2009", "use_case": "text editing", "switched_from": "", "story": "A Love Letter to Neovim"}, {"id": 758044608, "item_id": 47377788, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47377788", "by": "nunez", "date": "2026-03-14", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "It took me a few months to go fast with Vim, but once I did, nothing compares.", "excerpt": "There's an unofficial Claude Code plugin for Vim. It only does plan mode afaik. I haven't used it, but I have considered it. That said, I've been using Vim as my editor for the last ten years. The last few companies I worked for had integrations with VSCode, so I use it sometimes so that I could show those off, but nothing about it makes me want to give up my awesome Vim setup with my weird color scheme (Dalek). It t", "context": "Vim user for ten years", "use_case": "main editor", "switched_from": "", "story": "Emacs and Vim in the Age of AI"}, {"id": 758007793, "item_id": 47375487, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47375487", "by": "dbacar", "date": "2026-03-14", "stance": "warn", "quote": "They are hard to setup as code editors, lots of customizations are needed and in my opinion it does not pay off.", "excerpt": "I dont know what the deal is with these editors that makes them on HN front page so frequently. In my opinion they are good text editors (used emacs for 4 years, and switched to vim nearly 10 years ago) but for coding I see them as a joke apart from some edge cases(clojure, lisp...). They are hard to setup as code editors, lots of customizations are needed and in my opinion it does not pay off.", "context": "used emacs for 4 years, vim for nearly 10", "use_case": "coding", "switched_from": "", "story": "Emacs and Vim in the Age of AI"}, {"id": 753549248, "item_id": 47096828, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47096828", "by": "apothegm", "date": "2026-02-20", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "has come in handy almost every day since then", "excerpt": "Do you already do any work over SSH? What do you do if you need to edit any files in that context? Learning the essentials of vim was the sort of skill that for me took about 10 min per day over a couple months and has come in handy almost every day since then. Can you get by without it? I guess, if you do absolutely everything via a GUI. Or delegate all CLI work to LLMs without ever questioning or second guessing th", "context": "", "use_case": "editing files over SSH, git commits", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Is it worth learning Vim in 2026?"}]}