Vim 8.0 is coming

Personally, I find vim's modal editing to be very efficient. When starting from a clean slate, it doesn't really matter much -- but when changing/editing existing text/code, I find it feels much more natural. It also works well without using the mouse, which is important to me because of carpal tunnel syndrome (and also helps when working without a proper mouse, such as on laptops).

I've only toyed with emacs, but based on that, I don't think emacs' idea of keyboard "chords" is as good a fit as vi(m). With standard keybindings, it also puts a strain on my wrists.

Modal editing and the "edit language"[1] (verbs, nouns, modifiers (and motions), like dw=delete word, dd/dl=delete line, d$=delete from cursor to end-of-line, dG (delete to endo-of-file, where gg/G is motion for moving to top/bottom of file respectively), ciw()P=change inner word (cut word under cursor to buffer), add "()", escape out of insert mode, paste word between "()"). These look cryptic, but quickly starts to feel quite natural and intuitive.

My impression is that Emacs' Evil-mode has evolved quite a lot lately, and allows one to combine the best of both: a much better programming language (scheme dialect) for customization, with modal editing and vi(m) key bindings. But I've yet to play with it.

If you don't mind using the mouse, you might also want to look at ACME[2] - it's a bit more exotic, and unfortunately hasn't gotten as much support as VIM/Emacs.

The creator of Vim, Mjolnar, has a great video on "7 Habits For Effective Text Editing 2.0":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p6K4iIMlouI

I think the idea is very powerful: aim for incremental improvement in your workflow. You don't have to use vim to do that, but you certainly can use vim for that. Another editor that might be worth a look if you're not already familiar with vim, is: https://github.com/mawww/kakoune

The main argument for Neovim/vim/Emacs over other "smaller" editors would be the plugin eco-system. I have a theory though, that beginners tend to start out with a lot of plugins, and then gradually trim down, as they realize the power that lies within the editor itself.

Still, for vim, you will probably want a plugin manager (well, maybe not now with vim 8 supporting that out of the box :-), and depending on what you're writing, some integration with a tag tools, like cscope, perhaps a search-tool like Ag/The silver searcher: https://github.com/rking/ag.vim#readme

As for plugin manager, I'm personally in the process of moving - I'd suggest looking at Vundle and/or vim-plug.

Finally, you can generally count on any unix-like system to have some form of vi(m) installed -- I'm not sure I really see that as such an important point, but does make it easier to edit stuff on a server with only ssh open to the world. But that stuff you're editing should probably be in a VCS, and use some kind of automated push to land on the server anyway! :-)

[1] http://yanpritzker.com/2011/12/16/learn-to-speak-vim-verbs-n...

"A Tour of the Acme Editor", by Russ Cox [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dP1xVpMPn8M

> I don't really understand the culture of all the > customisation/plugins/etc. around text editors

1) small, basic install of (neo)vim for most users 2) totally separate extensions for those who need them without making the core app harder to test

> it's small and simple

Allowing plugins doesn't make the app any more difficult to use. And, of course, one thing some plugins do is make stuff easier than stock vim. IE rather than going:

:e ../../src/java/blah.java you could use one of the many fuzzy searc plugins and do something like: sjablja (ie just typing some of the letters from any part of the path and file name as long as it's in the correct order).

> I don't expect or need much from a text editor in the > first place

It's primarily a programmers editor, replacing for many people any IDE at all, so it's nice to be able to select a word and press a key and have that file open; jump between viewports on multiple files on multiple tabs; have word completion.

None of what I've described is some rare edge case.

One thing I use vim for is to get the results of grepping thousands of source code files, then trimming down the results using "remove lines matching this", "remove lines not matching this", or turning lists of filenames into dos or bash commands. Sure, you can do all this with bash but I don't know all the commands anything like as well as I know how to do this sort of stuff with recordings or regex within vim.

Afaik, nvi actually doesn't have all the features of the original vi. According to Wikipedia, "The aspects of nvi that are still marked preliminary or unimplemented are, for the time being, likely to remain that way." Moreover, nvi had been developed for a little while after the various BSDs stopped syncing with upstream due to licensing issues after version 1.79. I honestly think the reason no one develops it anymore is because no one cares. It's good enough for use in emergencies, and beyond that, it's either good enough for the people who use it, or they just use a more featureful editor.

I believe it was Stevie (a vi clone for the Atari ST).

vi works fine on my BSD machine.