Vi / Vim

[Jackolantern]

I hope I am not going to start some kind of war of biblical proportions here (not sure if this is a divisive topic), but I wanted to know what people's opinions of Vi and Vim are. If you don't know, these are text editors that originated in Unix. Vi has been around for over 30 years, and Vim is an updated version that has been around for about 15 years. They seem rather antiquated by today's standards, and yet they still have a rabid following after all these years and people still turning to it for editing.

I personally do not use them because I feel you are giving up too much by not using modern editors/IDEs. Code-completion that is constantly indexing, categorizing and writing meta-data on your code to help you write less (and once you get the hang of it in Visual Studio, Eclipse, NetBeans and others, much, MUCH less), syntax highlighting (I know some newer Vi/Vim implementations do have this, but many don't, and it is hard to think about not having such a basic and so useful feature), code formatting (automatic indenting/dedenting, bracket completion, etc.), and much, much more. And all this is worth losing for the dot function, some regex tools and a few other shortcuts?

I guess I just don't understand the decision to use nothing but Vi/Vim when (in my humble opinion) there are editors so much more advanced that can add leaps and bounds to productivity over such a simple editor. Am I missing the point?

[Chris]

I use it more like I use notepad on Windows, just use it to edit config files and maybe write an odd small script if I have to.

[Sharlenwar]

No, you aren't missing the point. I think that it is similar to what Notepad is to Windows, or any basic text editor that lets you edit a variety of files. I use notepad frequently, but then I do have an editor that has syntax highlighting and is customizable in that respect via templates and what not.

A lot of the time it is people choosing to go minimalistic and so which editor best supports that idea?

Just my opinion.

[Jackolantern]

The arguments I see and hear all the time for it really don't sound like they look at it as minimalistic, though. Many of them say that they can never go back to other editors after using it for a week or two, which isn't typically what someone would say about Notepad if they are just using it to "get the job done". I don't know lol. Maybe I should just check it out to see if it is worthy of the praise some devs give it haha.

[mattykins]

I use vim a lot, but never for really hardcore programming.

I've never used them but i know a mass amount of plugins exist that can make vim almost like a full featured IDE, that could be one reason for using it. And when working in a Linux environment its really simple just to open a new terminal window and vim a file, or if your like me and are working in a fullscreen multiplexed setup you can just split a new window open and use it.

But I see what your saying how you give up a lot of what full featured IDE's can give you. I guess a main reason people may use it would be 'change', people just don't like change hehe.

[OldRod]

I never cared for vi/vim - lots of friends absolutely raved about it, but I never could get into it.

Currently I'm using Sublime Text 2 which has syntax highlighting, autocomplete, etc. Previously I have pretty much used Notepad++, but Sublime is holding my attention right now