Why every software engineer should use vim

Conquer the “quitting vim” fear and give it a go

Rajob Raihan
Level Up Coding

It might seem like an overstatement at first and you might be furious or laughing depending on the kind of person you are, that a random vim enthusiast from the internet saying that every software engineer should use vim. But I hope you will have five minutes of your time to hear my reasoning and make your decision based on that.

I will not beat around the bush and directly get to the point:

  1. Vim kind of has a language of its own. If you master vim you can use it in every text editor and even in browser (yes you heard it right!).
  2. You grow always learning mentality.
  3. You will be really fast!
  4. It’s fun.

Vim kind of has a language of its own. If you master vim you can use it in every text editor
Many people have kind of a misunderstanding that if you use vim you have to use 1980’s UI/UX in terminal with no intellisense, debugger or any 21st-century features and you have to do load tons of customization. It’s totally a myth. You can use vim as a plugin in Intellij, vscode, sublime and almost all the IDE and use the latest and greatest IDE features and with zero customization.

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Responses (39)

What are your thoughts?

In my opinion Vim sucks and the only reason it's famous is because of its complicated usage. A text editor is supposed to be simple and intuitive enough so you can use it without noticing. Writing code effectively is the real thing you want to…...

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This is obviously mistaken because every software engineer should use Emacs

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vim, or just vi, is, for me, the "quickie editor" I bring up when I need to fix a config file, write a small shell script, or other minor jobs. I'll use more-powerful editors and IDEs for big jobs, but knowing vi is essential to being a good…...

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