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The State of Vim

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Re: The State of Vim

#21

Post by joeblubaugh »

mmooss wrote: post #15
porphyra wrote: post #11

Many of the Vim nerds I know, including myself, have switched over to Neovim. Only when using a remote server with a default installation do I use regular old Vim.

From the Stack Overflow survey: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42811182 Vim 21.6% Neovim 12.5% I wonder what it looked like in prior years.

I’m willing to believe that “vim” combines some neovim users, but I’m not surprised that the original is still more popular. Anecdotally vim seems to ship new features faster than it did 3 years ago.

Re: The State of Vim

#22

Post by mobilemidget »

runevault wrote: post #18
dmortin wrote: post #4

I wonder how long vim and emacs can stay vibrant. I've used emacs in the last 20 years, so I stick with it, but new generations who are trained on vscode and such are less likely to use such "old fashioned" tools. Surely, there will still be emacs and vim users 50 years from now, but the user numbers and the community power will diminish as the graybeards gradually leave this plane.

I think Neovim helps with this, though last time I was using it (via... bootstrap? One of the prebuilt addon packs) at some point a Mason update broke my LSPs for multiple languages and i went back to VS Code on my Linux laptop because I didn't want to fight with it.

I ran screaming from VS when I noticed how much resources it used and what software it copies on remote servers in case you want to work remote. Did this improve at all in the last year+?

Re: The State of Vim

#23

Post by flohofwoe »

atorodius wrote: post #13
dmortin wrote: post #4

I wonder how long vim and emacs can stay vibrant. I've used emacs in the last 20 years, so I stick with it, but new generations who are trained on vscode and such are less likely to use such "old fashioned" tools. Surely, there will still be emacs and vim users 50 years from now, but the user numbers and the community power will diminish as the graybeards gradually leave this plane.

I use VIM bindings in VS Code. Always assumed many do but might be wrong

Me too (there doesn't seem to be plugin that's completely free of issues unfortunately). Vi/Vim is basically the universal text input model which allows me to transcend text editors and platforms. Also I quite often find myself starting a vim instance inside the VSCode terminal for quick text edits.

Re: The State of Vim

#24

Post by matwood »

xarope wrote: post #16
atorodius wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use VIM bindings in VS Code. Always assumed many do but might be wrong

Ditto. I went from vim to neovim, but the LSPs for python/go(lang) for large files (not that large, maybe 10k loc) seem to really bog it down (back then, no idea if it's better now), whereas with VS Code it was still performant enough. So I ended up using VS Code with Vim bindings. And yes, with ad hoc work, I still end up using system vim when just doing simple edits (e.g. adding a line to README.md or somesuch)

Similar. I use IntelliJ, Neovim, and some Zed all with vim keybindings. Modal editing just fits my mind. As an aside it’s also one of the reasons I dislike Notion. I feel like I’m always inadvertently changing the content.

Re: The State of Vim

#25

Post by volemo »

krykp wrote: post #7
mmooss wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Emacs and Vim have remained popular through several generations. What do developer surveys say? Vim was near the top a few years ago, iirc.

With nvim, there has been quite the resurgence of Vim. Good software tends to be resilient. I believe both emacs and vim will see many, many more years.

I wonder, will there be something to emacs, as nvim is to vim?

Re: The State of Vim

#26

Post by Dalewyn »

mmooss wrote: post #10
eviks wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2024/technology#1-other-tool... emacs is 4% vs VSCode 73%, so it's not popular, though vim still is

Thanks. In more detail: Visual Studio Code 73.6% Visual Studio 29.3% IntelliJ IDEA 26.8% Notepad++ 23.9% Vim 21.6% Android Studio 16.1% PyCharm 15.1% Jupyter Notebook/JupyterLab 12.8% Neovim 12.5% ... Emacs 4.2% ... Spacemacs 0.4% So Vim + Neovim = 34.1%, essentially second to Visual Studio, the overwhelming leader.

I'm pleasantly surprised Notepad++ is so high up.

Re: The State of Vim

#27

Post by viraptor »

mmooss wrote: post #10
eviks wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2024/technology#1-other-tool... emacs is 4% vs VSCode 73%, so it's not popular, though vim still is

Thanks. In more detail: Visual Studio Code 73.6% Visual Studio 29.3% IntelliJ IDEA 26.8% Notepad++ 23.9% Vim 21.6% Android Studio 16.1% PyCharm 15.1% Jupyter Notebook/JupyterLab 12.8% Neovim 12.5% ... Emacs 4.2% ... Spacemacs 0.4% So Vim + Neovim = 34.1%, essentially second to Visual Studio, the overwhelming leader.

What this doesn't show is people using vscode/vs with neovim driver or vim key bindings. The vim "backend" percentage is going to be significant.

Re: The State of Vim

#28

Post by nicoloren »

gtsop wrote: post #19
porphyra wrote: post #11

Many of the Vim nerds I know, including myself, have switched over to Neovim. Only when using a remote server with a default installation do I use regular old Vim.

I went back and forth quite a lot until i decided to stick to vim. The reason being that I want to gain deep knowledge of my editor instead of depending on a gazillion plugins that occasionally break. Now, I understand this is something you can do with both vim and neovim, however the documentation of neovim is littered with both the vim docs and the new lua docs, and there is a vibe of "you already know all of vim,…

I did the same. I mostly use Vim without plugin and a simple vimrc file. For the heavy stuff and big projects I use VSCode.

Re: The State of Vim

#29

Post by flohofwoe »

eviks wrote: post #12
omoikane wrote: post #2

VIM seemed to have fared well under the new leadership, despite not being able to control the timing of this power transfer. Maybe other BDFL projects would be inspired by VIM's experience and setup successors early. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benevolent_dictator_for_life

that'd be the wrong lesson to extend a period of using a bad governance model for longer

You need someone to say 'no' to all the stupid ideas, and also to the occasional good idea to stay focused. Committees and communities are quite bad at that. IME the BDFL model has mostly worked best for open source software development, unless the BDFL is a complete ass of course.

(also software projects don't need to be democracies, e.g. people won't starve or sent to the gulag if things go sideways)

Re: The State of Vim

#30

Post by openmarkand »

porphyra wrote: post #11

Many of the Vim nerds I know, including myself, have switched over to Neovim. Only when using a remote server with a default installation do I use regular old Vim.

I have tried several times and I always switched back to vanilla vim. Neovim has various nice features but it requires a lot of time to migrate correctly IMHO. 20 years of habits are hard to leave, I think.

Sure the configuration file is retro compatible, but some of the plugins are better suited for neovim and vice versa. I use a dozen of them and if I switch permanently to neovim I'd like to start fresh using more "modern" alternatives that make use of the newer features.

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