The State of Vim

Original Article ↗ Hacker News Discussion ↗

Debate over the future of Vim highlights both its resilience and the pressures from newer tools like Neovim, VS Code, and JetBrains IDEs. Commenters contrast Vim’s stability, minimalism, and ubiquity (including vim keybindings embedded in other editors) with Neovim’s faster feature development, richer plugin ecosystem, and IDE-like capabilities—often at the cost of configuration complexity and occasional breakage. Underlying this is a broader reflection on open‑source governance models, the impact of forks and competition, and whether classic editors like Vim and Emacs can remain vibrant as usage patterns and developer expectations shift.

Project Governance & BDFL vs Committees

  • Strong debate over “benevolent dictator for life” (BDFL) vs committees.
  • Pro‑BDFL points: someone needs to say “no” to maintain focus; unpopular decisions are easier with a respected single leader; open source isn’t a democracy and forking is always an escape hatch.
  • Anti‑BDFL points: it’s a “bad governance model” extended too long; centralization can cause fragility (e.g., single maintainer blocking progress, infra gaps).
  • Committees are criticized as either paralyzed (“no to everything”) or bloated (“yes to everything”), but others argue that good leadership and team structures can outperform hero‑centric models.
  • Competition (e.g., forks like Neovim) is seen as a healthy check on any governance model.

Vim vs Neovim

  • Many self‑described “vim nerds” report switching to Neovim for:
    • Better async support, LSP, Treesitter, and richer plugin APIs (including headless mode and RPC plugins).
    • Active ecosystem and distributions (e.g., AstroNvim, LunarVim) that provide “batteries included” IDE‑like setups.
  • Others stick with classic Vim for:
    • Stability, conservative defaults, and fewer breaking changes.
    • Simplicity and avoiding “flashy”/animated configs; some view Neovim as turning into a “blinky IDE.”
  • Some users tried Neovim, hit regressions (terminal redraw, mouse behavior, breaking updates), and reverted to Vim.
  • It’s noted that recent Vim development accelerated, possibly in response to Neovim.

Popularity, Future of Vim/Emacs, and VS Code

  • Stack Overflow survey snippets are discussed:
    • VS Code dominates; Vim and Neovim together are substantial; Emacs is a small minority.
  • Some think younger developers, trained on VS Code and similar, will reduce Vim/Emacs mindshare over time.
  • Others point out Vim/Emacs have outlived many editors and expect them (or at least vim‑mode) to persist.

Workflows & Modal Editing

  • Many use Vim keybindings everywhere: VS Code, JetBrains, Zed, terminals, even window managers.
  • Modal editing is described as a transferable “universal text input model.”
  • Some “live” inside Vim/Neovim or Emacs as their primary shell/session; others pair Vim/Neovim with tmux or use Emacs as a general computing environment.

Config, Plugins, & Scripting

  • Neovim distributions are praised for making modern setups easy but criticized for complexity and frequent breakage.
  • Some prefer minimal configs and few plugins; others like curated distros with extensive defaults.
  • Vim9 script is promoted as a big improvement over classic Vimscript and more natural for editor scripting than Lua, but skepticism remains about adding yet another language when Lua already powers a thriving ecosystem.
  • XDG base directory adoption triggers the usual “home clutter” vs “don’t change my paths” tension.