# Vim Reviews **Vendor:** Vim **Category:** [Healthcare Integration Engines](https://www.g2.com/categories/healthcare-integration-engines) **Average Rating:** 4.4/5.0 **Total Reviews:** 268 ## About Vim Vim is a highly configurable and efficient text editor, renowned for its versatility and power. As an enhanced version of the traditional 'vi' editor, Vim offers a comprehensive feature set that caters to a wide range of text editing needs, from simple note-taking to complex programming tasks. Its modal design, which separates editing tasks into distinct modes, allows users to perform actions swiftly and with precision. While Vim has a steeper learning curve compared to conventional editors, it rewards users with unparalleled efficiency and control once mastered. Key Features and Functionality: - Modal Editing: Vim operates in different modes—such as Normal, Insert, and Visual—each tailored for specific tasks, enabling efficient text manipulation. - Extensive Customization: Users can tailor Vim to their preferences through a vast array of plugins and scripts, enhancing functionality and adapting the editor to various workflows. - Syntax Highlighting: Vim supports syntax highlighting for numerous programming languages, aiding in code readability and reducing errors. - Multi-File and Multi-Window Support: Users can edit multiple files simultaneously, utilizing split windows and tabs to manage complex projects effectively. - Integrated Help System: Vim includes a comprehensive help system, providing users with immediate access to documentation and guidance. - Cross-Platform Availability: Vim is available on various operating systems, including Unix, Linux, Windows, and macOS, ensuring a consistent editing experience across platforms. Primary Value and User Solutions: Vim addresses the need for a powerful and efficient text editing tool that can handle a wide range of tasks, from simple text editing to complex programming. Its modal design and extensive customization options allow users to tailor the editor to their specific workflows, enhancing productivity and reducing the time spent on repetitive tasks. By supporting multiple programming languages and offering features like syntax highlighting and multi-file editing, Vim serves as a versatile tool for developers and writers alike. Its cross-platform availability ensures that users have a consistent and reliable editing environment, regardless of the operating system they use. ## Vim Reviews ### 1. Fast, simple (when you learn it) and lightweight **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Lucas G. | Python/Django Developer, Architecture & Planning, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 26, 2016 **What do you like best about Vim?** Super easy and fast shorcuts that you can also compond/mix them in order to create other ones. Vimrc possibility with lots! of customization to change almost everything. It's really good for programmers that like constant learning. or if you like scripting. Huge amount of really good plugins to make something like a simple vi editor more like a sublime one. Terminal mode. Really lightweight editor, even when you add a considerable ammount of plugins to it. And when you compare it against other editor like Sublime or Atom. **What do you dislike about Vim?** The code is kinda messy and the vim script language is not that good. There a huge learning curve at first. Not exactly because of the shortcuts be the amount of customization you need to do in order to have a professional text editor. You need to read a lot of documentation and dotfiles to finally make your own .vimrc that suits your needs and goes with you. Yes, there's a lot of plugins... but they are not nearly as well integrated and done as functionality you could find in other modern text editors likes Sublime, Atom or PyCharms. They lack power. **Recommendations to others considering Vim:** If you have some of the hacker spirit. Like learning a old but really good editor. Or are a administrations (sysadmin) guy who need to ssh in to servers and make edits (also if you love the terminal). YES! definitively learn vim. Other options for learning vim may be the reason you don't like to use the mouse which is a good one, but face it we are in a modern age when mouse can be really useful. **What problems is Vim solving and how is that benefiting you?** Super fast editing of code while developing/programming. Not having to use the mouse since it kinda slows me down and it annoying. ### 2. Fastest and bes terminal based text editor **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Sai Krishna Kubera G. | CEO, Automotive, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 26, 2016 **What do you like best about Vim?** The only editor with many keyboard shortkuts and can be accessed faster without requirement of mouse. Syntax highlighting for many languages are found. Many extensible plugins can be added easily. Avalable on all known platforms with same accessability and same features. No hanging at all when iam using it. Opening a file or merging is all with terminal commands in ubuntu which is easier and faster to access. **What do you dislike about Vim?** It is completely terminal based which is boring sometimes. User interface is fixed. Lots of time required to get used to it as it has many shortkuts and keyborad keys. Many new programmers should know about this software as it is best for them but there is no much popurality as i guess. **Recommendations to others considering Vim:** Passioned programmers and beginners can easily use this with great keyboard shortkuts. Fast programmers should use this as it is fastest for any one to use. **What problems is Vim solving and how is that benefiting you?** As a Progammer i used many old text editors which made my work tough to proceed. Many programs in different languges has its own syntax highlighting helped me alot to understand easily and work effeciently. ### 3. Editor using just keyboard **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Siddartha L. | Student, Higher Education, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 21, 2016 **What do you like best about Vim?** All the functionalities of a eiditor can be done withing keyboard itsled which is morefaster considering the usage of both mouse and kayboard. Fully syntax highlighted for many known languages are found which makes the code to look clean and better. It is free and open source as well. There many other new features inclusive of same old text editor features as well. **What do you dislike about Vim?** Lots of keyboard shortcuts to be learned which makes difficult for a beginner to use and user directly shifts to some other good UI based text editor. But later we find this as the best editor. Text editing within the terminal makes some time space shortage which is bit irritating to a fast programmer. **Recommendations to others considering Vim:** Any programmer who is willing to make things in a faster pace can use this which is free of cost and can be installed in terminal itslef. **What problems is Vim solving and how is that benefiting you?** As a computer engineer i normally use many code in different languages and edit them frequently. As time complextity is what matters to programmer we reuire everything to be done faster which VIM does it for us. ### 4. Powerful command line text editor **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Josh M. | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 25, 2016 **What do you like best about Vim?** I use Vim for everything from taking notes to full scale development. Using Vim feels so natural and fast. After learning how to use the various modes and commands Vim is now the quickest text editor I have ever used. Another great feature is that it works just perfectly via ssh or other remote connections, while still offering the power of a full fledged text editor. This is especially useful if you are developing and need to get into your server and verify or make a quick change, you can use the same editor you use on your machine so you can be just as quick and efficient. Finally I love that there are so many great plug-ins for Vim, You don't really need any to enjoy using it, but they really make it much more powerful. A few examples are, git integration, code completion, syntax and error checking, and many many more. Oh and one last final note, VIm works on Linux, Windows, and OS X. I really can't say enough good things about Vim, just try it! **What do you dislike about Vim?** The only problem I have with Vim is the learning curve. It takes a fair amount of effort to become proficient at using Vim, but the payout it definitely worth it. I use this as a dislike because I have referred many colleagues to use Vim and they get started and get frustrated with learning it and quit using it. It really isn't that bad to learn and you will end up loving it if you give it a worthy effort. **Recommendations to others considering Vim:** Be patient and take a couple hours to learn it well. There is a vim-tutor program that comes with it that helps a ton. Don't get frustrated because the eventual payout is worth way more than the time you invest learning how to use Vim. **What problems is Vim solving and how is that benefiting you?** I am an aspiring security professional so the problems I'm involved in solving vary greatly. I have used Vim in every aspect of my career though. From Simply taking notes, to developing in c and python, to reverse engineering. I can't imagine a more useful or versatile tool for the jobs. ### 5. A nice little terminal text editor **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Rebecca S. | Software Engineer, Information Technology and Services, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 23, 2016 **What do you like best about Vim?** My favorite part of Vim is its convenience. When typing into the terminal, it's a simple built-in command to bring up the Vim editor on any text file. There are other editors in this category, such as emacs, but Vim is lighter-weight than Emacs and does not autosave old versions of files. When emacs autosaves old versions of files, it can be annoying because of the need to manually delete them. Vim is a mainstream text editor used by the Ruby community and the shared experience with other developers also draws me to Vim. **What do you dislike about Vim?** What I dislike about Vim comes from its lightweightness. Firstly, I prefer GUI-based text editors to move around longer files. Vim also lacks features such as autocomplete of commands and requires special settings to color-code program text. **Recommendations to others considering Vim:** Vim is a good supplement to a heavier-weight IDE **What problems is Vim solving and how is that benefiting you?** I tend to use Vim alongside more comprehensive IDEs to make quick little changes to files. When I don't feel like opening up a full-blown IDE, Vim is useful. Vim has saved me time I would otherwise have spent fumbling around files and directories. Vim also supports a wide variety of languages and I have used Vim for writing code in a number of languages, as well as plain-text documents. It's like having a notepad in your console. ### 6. Effective text Editor - Vim **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** kiran k. | Student, Computer Software, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 22, 2016 **What do you like best about Vim?** Vim is a free text editor. It is fully handled by the keyboard using commands. It can be used for writing codes, content writing etc. Auto completion in Vim saves time for editors. Preference can be changed, so that interface looks great. There are many shortcuts available in Vim which makes typing easier. Vim is supported by many platforms (Linux, windows). Plugins can be included which helps in adding extra features. **What do you dislike about Vim?** Vim is little difficult to handle for beginners, user must know all commands and shortcuts in order to use effectively. So it takes time to get expert in Vim. Most of the features available in Vim are also available in other text editors. The Interface can be improved so that users feel Vim has user friendly. **Recommendations to others considering Vim:** Vim is great text editor to use. Spend some time in learning the commands and shortcuts, then it will work for you. If you don't want to learn and need an easy, user friendly text editor then go for others, there are many other similar text editors availbale. **What problems is Vim solving and how is that benefiting you?** I use Vim daily for writing programs. It is a great text editor, it made my typing really easy. I saved time using shortcuts available in Vim. ### 7. Vim -- it is everywhere! **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Michael C. | Organizer and Founding Member, Information Technology and Services, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 21, 2016 **What do you like best about Vim?** Vim (Vi iMproved) is fast clean and extensible. This is the current incarnation of the vi editor, that has been a part of unix scene since 1976. Vim has been included with or easily installable on each operating system and environment that I have worked with for the last 20 years and more. It is everywhere. This means that no matter where you go, Vim or another Vi derived editor is there. The same commands, the same modes of operation, therefore, no new learning curve. When you go to a new computing environment. you can do your work without the trouble of learning a new editor. With vim there no features that you are used to using but are missing on the day you really need it, just because the editor of the day failed to include them--just get your work done. This can be critical for getting your work done, when you are using a remote computer of a web hosting provider that your client selects. **What do you dislike about Vim?** That to appeal to the "it must have a GUI crowd", GUI version have appeared that damages the best features of Vim and get in the way of really learning the editor. **Recommendations to others considering Vim:** It would not have lasted for 40 years, as the primary editor of developers, programmers, and others if it was not worth the try. It has proven its worth in the field and lasted the test of time for 40 years and still going strong. **What problems is Vim solving and how is that benefiting you?** It has enhanced productivity by not forcing users to learn another new editor once again, as they move from one OS or environment to another. It is not the only editor that I use, but it is all the same the only one that I have never left behind. ### 8. Vim : The best code editor **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Thejdeep G. | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 21, 2016 **What do you like best about Vim?** - Vim is free and has a vibrant community This code editor is open source and is available for free. It also has website and scripts updated constantly by an active community that is backing this project - Highly Customizable There are scripts that you can find to do just anything and all of these are available for free. There are scripts to give a folder structure, git plugins and a lot more - Heavily Portable All you have to do is to copy the configuration file .vimrc and paste the same into another system that you want to use with the same vim configuration and you are good to go. **What do you dislike about Vim?** - You have to use the terminal if you have to use vim There are times when users prefer a more isolated software, users who prefer not to use the terminal for their text editing needs. - Only for developers Designers who code in HTML and CSS might find Vim useless. Only developers benefit from this editor. - Steep Learning Curve The huge number of modes that Vim users can be daunting for first time users. Other editors like TextMate and Sublime-Text can be lot more simpler and pleasing to look at. **Recommendations to others considering Vim:** Vim is great if you are a developer. The huge number of scripts available can customize your vim for an ultimate developer experience. And also its availability across many Linux distributions only means you don't have to search extensively. It also saves your time, makes you a faster coder /increase your long term productivity . **What problems is Vim solving and how is that benefiting you?** I, being a developer, work most of the time on the Terminal. Therefore, vim comes of great advantage to edit and test code on the fly without having to leave the premises of the terminal. Since, it is present or available for most Linux distros, it is an added advantage when I am working across servers with different distributions. ### 9. My go-to IDE **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Entertainment | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 21, 2016 **What do you like best about Vim?** Simple, small, available on any *nix box **What do you dislike about Vim?** nothing. There is nothing I dislike. :) **What problems is Vim solving and how is that benefiting you?** this is my editor used for developing, etc. ### 10. A great console text editor. **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Jose E. | Software Developer, Information Technology and Services, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 20, 2016 **What do you like best about Vim?** It's just the best text editor you can use as a programmer on an Unix-Environment. If you have any Unix-Based system, then you have access to the console, and consequently to vim. Vim gives you the power, yet the freedom to code on any programming language you want with auto-completetion(with plugins), and much, much more! Besides, once you have practiced a lot with it, and installed all the plugins you need, you'll work lighting fast. Even without a graphical user interface, you'll work very fast. **What do you dislike about Vim?** I dislike how hard to learn is it. The commands are not very intuitive. For instance, to save you have to type: ":w", i understand the 'W' stands for "write", but it's much common for programs to save with just "ctrl-s". You need to practice a lot in order to be productive with it, and understand all the modes it has(INSERT, NORMAL, and VISUAL). **Recommendations to others considering Vim:** If you want to use Vim, then google for a guide or the documentation of it. It's pretty difficult to learn all the commands of VIM, and how to install plugins to adapt it for all your needs. Once done that, you're ready to use it! **What problems is Vim solving and how is that benefiting you?** As a Software and Web Developer, i use multiple Linux Systems(Oracle, Ubuntu, Red Hat, etc), and I always need to write a program or debug one, and VIM is really great for that. Also, Vim come on almost every Linux Distro installed by default. ### 11. Pretty awesome **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Computer Software | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 14, 2016 **What do you like best about Vim?** The ability to modify blocks of text quickly **What do you dislike about Vim?** The high learning curve is a barrier to most newcomers **What problems is Vim solving and how is that benefiting you?** Text editing efficiency. You do a lot of repetitive things when editing code. This helps you move through it much more quickly ### 12. No nonsense text editor for linux **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Swadesh S. | HGA, Insurance, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 18, 2015 **What do you like best about Vim?** Fully extensible with plugins, fast, in-console text editor. Syntax highlighting for every languages/code i have written, auto completion. Did I mention fast? A plethora of key-bindings and more custom ones can be created, actually more than one can remember. One package that is worth mentioning is vundle, a package manage for vim itself. Split editing, be it vertically or horizontally. And all this from the : prompt. When you lay your hands on a low end linux box, you start to appreciate the elegance of vim. **What do you dislike about Vim?** Anyone coming form a gui text editor will have to learn a lot, actually, the learning curve is so steep that most don't finish the process and call it quits. There are new packages being released every day, it seems impossible to keep up. There is no definitive guide to best text editing using vim, for veterans, it all comes down to personal choices at the end. Well, there are guides claiming the best editing practices but I have found myself to be counterproductive when simply following their guide. So, it takes sometime before you build your habit and a set of packages that you absolutely need. **Recommendations to others considering Vim:** Don't be afraid of vim, learning vim completely requires you to read some of the books available online/amazon and that's only base vim. Then there are the plugins you install and their usage. So, forget about all that, learn what you think you need, google your requirement. Nobody is asking you if you know vim (unless you sit for interviews), it's yours to use, if you like something, embrace it. **What problems is Vim solving and how is that benefiting you?** For security purpose, our office uses RHEL but the central systems run windows 7 enterprise. If I need to deploy something on the user systems, I first need to test it and I do that on ubuntu-gnome (personal pref) running inside vmware. That guest system ends up being quite slow to actually type into in a 'modern' editor without tearing my hair out. This is where vim comes. ### 13. best text editor for programmers **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Abhishek R. | Member Of Technical Staff, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 16, 2016 **What do you like best about Vim?** Vim Is Very customisable & Extensible, it let you type partial names of files, commands, help entries, etc. and searches for them incrementally, on-the-fly. You don't have to type the names entirely from the beginning, it works on telnet and SSH connections, it can be very easily installed on a remote server and can be easily accessed on the client system, this makes it the best text editor in small capacity machines such as raspberry pi etc, especially when the gui required is minimal. Vim's configuration is portable which means we can copy the entire configuration of one system to another the entire configuration is portable. Vim is a good documentation of the code. Scripting, file merge, and a GUI shell are some the best appreciated features, because of the modality the most common commands do not need to be "decorate" with Ctrl- or alt- keys. All of the major navigation and editing functions require only 2 or 3 keys, without the bizarre finger-straining exercises required by EMACS or prowling through menus. Vim for Windows maps most of the standard keys as well, so page up and page down work as expected and if you want them to do something else, you can edit the keybindings file. If you edit a lot of batch files, PERL scripts, if you regularly move between Windows and *nix environments Vim extremely powerful. **What do you dislike about Vim?** Vim includes a basic GUI, you might as well be using Notepad. There are too many modes, switching between them is cumbersome. If you primarily write formatted text, Vim is not the best tool for you, It's a very old editor with not much from it predecessor Vi editor. Vim can't natively do most of the Jobs, there are plugins available for everything. A lot of movement is done via arrow keys. Vim is very plain and simple with minimum GUI which makes it very difficult for the users to operate. Vim can only be accessed by the terminal. It limits the functionality of the mouse. **Recommendations to others considering Vim:** I recommend other programmers to Vim as there primary text editor as makes editing code a lot easier and faster on the terminal. **What problems is Vim solving and how is that benefiting you?** I'm a software engineer, its a very good editor for programming on terminals and very basic machines such as rasp berry pi which doesn't need GUI. Vim saves time lot of work can be done in fewer key strokes, editing code is lot faster and easier than ever, but even so I think I could enjoy not having to use the mouse at all. Utility over SSH connections, VIM is extensible in many ways and one of those ways is VimL/VimScript. Via Vim-scripting and variables in VIM you can basically modify, extend or totally replace standard behavior. ### 14. The Linux Editor **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Abhi A. | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 16, 2016 **What do you like best about Vim?** Vi and Vim exists on most of the Unix and Linux platforms. Thus it acts as a universal editor for Linux machines. Moreover it is much faster when compared to any other editors. And it has a pretty active community and the most powerful part is that Vim is scriptable. So one can do great activities using it. **What do you dislike about Vim?** The primary disadvantage of Vim is that it takes a long time to learn the software and it would take months to become proficient. Also one cant expect the user interface to be great in Vim. There are too many modes in Vi or Vim. For instance, pressing 'i' goes to insert mode and capital 'I' points to the beginning of the line. Other disadvantages is that we cant use mouse to control the position of the cursor. **Recommendations to others considering Vim:** I recommend using other editors and IDE such as Sublime text, Gedit etc. which has more User Interface and with which one can be comfortable, which does not require any skills to learn the software. Also the IDE's comes with a template for different languages which we can make use of. **What problems is Vim solving and how is that benefiting you?** I use Vim primarily to edit files that do not take much of space and which I have to do it without consuming much of my time. Also Vim serves for a great purpose when I am using ssh. ### 15. An awesome editor for Unix **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Munendra S. | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 15, 2016 **What do you like best about Vim?** Vim is based on vi for Unix. Vim is free and open source software with both command line interface and stand-alone GUI. Vim is based on commands to text user interface. Vim is also highly customizable with many available plugins. It has the syntax highlighting feature. Also, good support from open source community. It can be used only through keyboard binding. **What do you dislike about Vim?** Vim has steep learning curve for the beginners but after this phase it is one among the best. Code base for vim is not shared fully hence, adding new features and development is cumbersome. Makes other editor usage very difficult. Support for OS other than linux distribution is not good. **Recommendations to others considering Vim:** If you are looking for console based editors then vim and emacs are the ones. Unlike Emacs, vim has better syntax high-lightening. Vim has steep learning curve but good online support is available. Vim is highly customizable, definitely would increase your productivity. **What problems is Vim solving and how is that benefiting you?** Using vim as default editor at home. Due to its customization, productivity has been doubled. Vim is really helpful if your work consists of reading large files. Benefits: Good online support for Linux distribution Easily available plug-ins for customization Regular expression searches ### 16. Incredibly awesome weapon that I can never ever get rid of **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Minh N. | Developer, Computer Software, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 15, 2016 **What do you like best about Vim?** Damn faster, much handier and super powerful! This is the main reason pop out of my head first, let's break it down into smaller ones below. First, less arm movement. So no more arm movement when we need to switch from the alpha keys to navigation keys (up down, home end ..) and modification keys (delete, backspace, insert ..), all can be done with your hands stick to the main section of the keyboard. We don't even need the mouse to scroll up/down, click, and navigate around. IMHO, tiny movements like that will slow you down a lot in your everyday typing life. Handy key-strokes, and code-aid features, very friendly to coder. I was familiar with Eclipse and a few other code editors with very useful shortcut keys, and I can say, with a big help from various useful plugins, there's really nothing other editors have but vim doesn't, but NOT vice versa. Plugins, a ton of it. A cool page to find one is http://vimawesome.com (we also have color theme there), or a classic one at http://www.vim.org/scripts . To be honest, there's a few plugins I find essential (such as NERDTree, Vundle ..) and actually keep thinking they are parts of vim itself. Plugins give vim value-added features, and some can be found in no other editor/ide. (Finally, as it's too long already) Customizable, and pimp it your self. It's much like Arch Linux, comes initially with just the powerful core working instance, and everything else should be installed, customized based on your own need. So it may not always the best choice for no-i-dont-like-tweaking-anything guys. **What do you dislike about Vim?** Nothing, to be honest, but maybe, the learning curve, as it seems to be crazy to get started with vim, as it's different from most of the normal editors. From what I've seen so far, as I recommended vim to a lot of people, there are only 2 types. The 1st, about 80% of people, will give up right in the first week, and never come back to try it again. The 2nd will never be able to happily code without vim after that damn hard first week. Once your muscles get used to it, you can never leave it. **Recommendations to others considering Vim:** Highly recommended, especially for new users who haven't found their ideal editors yet. To get started with it, `vimtutor` might help, and after that, you may grab an existing `.vimrc` (vim config) somewhere to see how people use vim in real life; mine could be found at https://github.com/soyelmnd/.swissknife . And as I'm a vim mania always wanna meet vim friends, feel free to drop me an email if you have troubles getting started with this damn cool weapon :-) **What problems is Vim solving and how is that benefiting you?** Everyday developer life, improve speed and productivity, a lot! As I did some real-life user testings with vim users, their typing speed in vim is about 1.3x - 1.8x faster than without vim (as tested with Javascript, in vim vs Notepad++, Sublime, Eclipse and Atom). And, it's funny, most of them say no to switching back to non-vim binding. If I have to switch to another IDE, chances are I'll have to look for a way to enable vim-binding for that IDE (as I did with VRapper for Eclipse, Vimderbar for Brackets, and in Netbean), as typing without vim is a nightmare to me. ### 17. VIM, a usefull text editor **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Gustavo G. | Web Developer, Information Technology and Services, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 19, 2016 **What do you like best about Vim?** I can used in every *nix machine, I can use it on server via ssh, there's a community around the text editor making plugins to make the process to wirte code easy **What do you dislike about Vim?** Vim does no have a multicursor like sublime **Recommendations to others considering Vim:** Use it, you would like it **What problems is Vim solving and how is that benefiting you?** no one, just code my scripts with this editor ### 18. Probably the best command line editor out there so far (or one of them). **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Christian S. | Freelance Writer, Internet, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 08, 2016 **What do you like best about Vim?** The more you learn with Vim the more apparent its uses and power become. Although there's a steep learning curve it's not impossible to learn with good practised tuition. The way in which it's designed at first may seem counter intuitive but are applied as they are for good reason. Everything is set up to be faster and more efficient than other editors when in the right hands. It's also an incredibly fast editor straight out of the box not to mention portable and works through a collection of key bindings, motions, modes, commands, sequences, macros, and expressions. Which all come together and are combined to beautiful effect. The real power of Vim comes from third party plugin support however and is what makes it the great editor people claim it to be. With plugins you can hack and customise Vim to be however you want it to be. Whether that be turning it into a full blown IDE or an important part of a workflow. Plugins are numerous but tend to offer features such as syntax highlighting, syntax checking, navigation, auto-completion, finders, wrappers, colour schemes, etc. **What do you dislike about Vim?** Vim has a steep learning curve if you don't put any time into learning how it works. Any notions of how other text editors function won't really help or apply either, as Vim uses its own unique ideas and has a very different take on how to get things done. The code-base for Vim is well protected and highly prized. Making it hard for development of new features or rewrites to be contributed successfully by the community. This has forced forks such as NeoVim to begin adding new efficiency and improvements separately to the program. If you like Vim as it is though this of course isn't a concern. **Recommendations to others considering Vim:** If you are new to command line text editing (or are tired of GUI editors) there are two main choices out there. GNU Emacs or Vim. Try both of these and see which you prefer, they both have their pluses and minuses. Just remember to have patience and be ready to learn when it comes to VIM. This will pay off in the long term if you do. **What problems is Vim solving and how is that benefiting you?** Vim is completely open source and therefore free. It's also as mentioned earlier portable (alongside your config) so can be used on any Linux server/OS. The more you learn and add to Vim the more personalised it can become. This means you can include it as part of a workflow or setup to help better carry out tasks or solutions to problems, regardless of how specific and individualised to you or the business they are. it's just a matter of learning and time. ### 19. My favorite editor for quick changes and single file editing **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Raymond H. | Partner, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 06, 2016 **What do you like best about Vim?** Vim has been my go to editor for many years now. Lately I've started using some more full fledged IDEs for larger projects but Vim remains my editor of choice for single file editing and advanced text editing. While not highly intuitive, it is extremely powerful and quick to use after you get used to it. Regular expression search and replace is very quick and easy as well as block and hex editing. It's also extremely fast and doesn't take a long time to load like IDEs do. **What do you dislike about Vim?** It takes a long time to learn enough to even be efficient using Vim. And to truly learn all it has to offer would probably take more than a lifetime. It's also not very good for large projects as there is no easy way of grouping files together that I'm aware of. **Recommendations to others considering Vim:** Go ahead and try it a while. Go through a few tutorials to get your hands dirty and do a few regular expression search and replaces if you're familiar with regex. View the ease of opening any file on your computer with the right click menu in Windows or use it in the command line on a unix system and you'll quickly find yourself using it all the time. **What problems is Vim solving and how is that benefiting you?** I frequently need an editor to re-format a lot of text, and vim gives me that with block editing and regular expression replacements. I also need something that's quick to open from anywhere, and the right click and edit with vim option is great for that. ### 20. Advanced Text Editor **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Sean B. | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 09, 2016 **What do you like best about Vim?** The thing I like most about Vim are the shortcuts, advanced commands, and plugins that let me do things that no other text editor can do. **What do you dislike about Vim?** One thing I dislike about Vim is the learning curve. For new users to switch to Vim it takes time to get used to. This is alright though because it has the best features when you learn how to use them. Vim is also not very good at managing object oriented projects. However this could be improved through plugins. **Recommendations to others considering Vim:** There's a steep learning curve. Make sure to keep learning how to do new things faster. I have been using Vim for years now and still don't know how to fully use all the features Vim has. **What problems is Vim solving and how is that benefiting you?** I am able to write code much faster than in a regular programming text editor. ### 21. VIM, easy editing **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Semiconductors | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 11, 2016 **What do you like best about Vim?** Short key entries for quick and repetitive editing **What do you dislike about Vim?** Wish it offered prettify like GNU Emacs (auto indenting and start/end for code writing) **What problems is Vim solving and how is that benefiting you?** Software and script generation and maintenance ### 22. Vim is a fast, efficient and extensible text editor best for power users **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Marketing and Advertising | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 23, 2015 **What do you like best about Vim?** Vim's unique modal input system makes editing very efficient because you don't need to move your hands from the typing home position to reach for mouse or cursor keys. Editor commands can easily be repeated and chained with various keyboard short-cuts and quantifiers. The editor is also easily extensible using vim's own scripting language, so it can be used to edit practically anything. **What do you dislike about Vim?** It is difficult for first-time users to get used to the modal input system and vim does not follow the same conventions as other programmes but following the tutorial supplied with the editor will teach you enough for you start using it for work. It can take years to learn the more complicated vim commands but it's worth it. You'll never be able to learn it all either, because the vim community continuously adds new features through the plugin system. **Recommendations to others considering Vim:** Vim requires you to configure it to your personal needs before it will be useful for you, so read about configuring it early on. Although it may be difficult at first, once you learn to use it well you will be more efficient than using standard editors that easy to get started with, so don't be disheartened in the beginning; follow the tutorials and read tips on-line. **What problems is Vim solving and how is that benefiting you?** My daily work is split between researching solutions to problems and editing text files. Having a good editor like vim that lets me edit files very effectively lets me complete high-quality work on time. Newer, popular editors lack support for our proprietary systems but I was easily able to build support into vim using its plugin system. ### 23. A text editor, that also doubles up for a complete dev tool **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Subhendu M. | Systems engineer, Information Technology and Services, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 22, 2015 **What do you like best about Vim?** I have a very specific workflow, write/fix code using a text editor, use git for version control, upload to github and test the newly released code using travis. The most important part, however is the text editor. The world I was brought up in did not have fancy editors to do half the job for a coder. Since the beginning, I was a fan of vi and its brothers, the simplistic interface that did not have anything extra, that did not require me to fiddle with mouse. However, vim was something that astounded me. It had the same features of vi, but not the quirks. It still starts in a flash, the insert/command modes are also intact but the additions were mind boggling, It has proper support for navigation keys, syntax highlighting, fully extendable with plugins and split screen support. It is the best text editor to date. For beginners, it also offers a gui mode. **What do you dislike about Vim?** This is not a problem with vim itself but more of a problem with my memory. Now, the bundles I use also have some kind of command, vim itself has lots of commands, so many actually that there are books to teach vim. Learning them and remembering becomes a bit problematic down the years. Sometimes gui editors are better with their tool-tips to explain what something does and one click executes it. It still requires a mouse though. **Recommendations to others considering Vim:** You are a mouse kind of guy, you probably will not like it as many of colleagues have shown. However, if you can get past the trouble you think is typing commands to do everything, my friend, jump aboard, you will mark this date in calendar. **What problems is Vim solving and how is that benefiting you?** It lets me edit code without getting in my way. It lets me make mistakes, which might be detrimental to business but I will never make those mistakes again. There is the git plugin, I can add and commit directly from vim commands, so that is one less step to go through. With modern editors, it feels as if I can't concentrate on the code, there are lots going on around. ### 24. Great! **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Semiconductors | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 05, 2016 **What do you like best about Vim?** Autocomplete, Visual Processing, Customization **What do you dislike about Vim?** Nothing in particular. It is very good and productive. **What problems is Vim solving and how is that benefiting you?** Code Editing ### 25. DevOps Engineer at Refinery29 **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Internet | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 17, 2015 **What do you like best about Vim?** Vim (or at least vi) is installed by default on nealy every *nix operating system, and is available for Windows. Learn it once, use it anywhere. Also it's configuration and customization system is very complete as it has nearly 25 years of active development and contribution. **What do you dislike about Vim?** Steep learning curve to use efficiently. From the time I started using Vim, it took a few months of constant use before I felt like interacting with the editor wasn't slowing down my use of the editor. **Recommendations to others considering Vim:** Just learn it, the benefits of learning such a ubiquitous editor are overwhelming for any user who uses the command line at all. I switched from vim to Sublime text for a while, but switched back because of the benefit of never not having my primary editor available on a machine far outweighed the look and usability of such a heavy handed editor. **What problems is Vim solving and how is that benefiting you?** I use Vim for editing any and all text files, for taking notes, and sometimes for examining logs, if other command line tools aren't cutting it. ### 26. Vim for the win! **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** E Brent N. | Software Development Engineer, Computer Software, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 17, 2015 **What do you like best about Vim?** Vim can be as simple or as complex as you need it, but what I like best about vim is that it can be run from anything that has a terminal. I use it from my iPad by remoting in to a remote server and running it from there. It is one of very few REAL full fledged editors that you can run from a sandboxed tablet. **What do you dislike about Vim?** The hardest thing about vim is the learning curve required to get to a point where it is useful to you. Vim is not for the weak at heart, nor is it for folks who are not quite technically sound. You really have to be committed to learning it, but once you do you will never look back. **Recommendations to others considering Vim:** If you are technical and love to tinker/figure things out on your own vim is an excellent choice. Stick with it and you will not regret it. If you aren't very technical or have a hard time with complex software (or software without graphics) I recommend trying out something else like the Atom Editor... but ultimately get more technical and switch to vim when you can because it is truly the best solution out there. **What problems is Vim solving and how is that benefiting you?** I am a senior software engineer. I have been using vim for only about a year so far (previous editors were TextMate, Sublime, Notepad++, and Eclipse). I love it and haven't looked back since. Vim is very lightweight so I am able to get my work done faster and unhindered. I am able to have multiple windows of code open and available with all the bells and whistles I want (currently for web development I have syntax highlighting, javascript linting, and git integration all built in). To fully realized the full potential of vim I use it hand in hand with tmux. This allows me to have server and front end code open at the same time and other things like build processes, etc. And like I said, all of this runs very thinly so you don't have a lot of memory/CPU killing your machine (or the remote machine if you are using from a distance). ### 27. A great tool for any programmer **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Gabriel F. | Summer Intern, Financial Services, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 17, 2015 **What do you like best about Vim?** Vim's integration with the terminal and ability to quickly and efficiently edit any file on the spot, without having to leave the terminal, open the file in another application, edit it and overwrite it. Vim isn't the easiest text editor out there, I would even say its learning curve is somewhat steep. Nevertheless, after learning its ropes, your productivity will be greatly increased. **What do you dislike about Vim?** Vim's commands and shortcuts aren't very intuitive at first and require some time to master. **Recommendations to others considering Vim:** I would recommend looking into Vim's documentation before trying to use it since unless you know its shortcuts and commands, you'll probably have a bad experience. On the other hand, if you know them, you'll see how powerful of a tool Vim is. **What problems is Vim solving and how is that benefiting you?** While developing applications in different programming languages over distributed systems and the web, I spend a great deal of time on UNIX based terminals. Being edit all kinds of files on the spot, without leaving the terminal, has greatly improved my productivity as a developer. ### 28. I just love Vim! **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Daniel A. | Co-Founder, Information Technology and Services, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 15, 2015 **What do you like best about Vim?** Once you get the grasp of this tool, it will be a great boost to your productivity. If I ever have to use any other text editor or IDE for some reason, the first thing I want to do is activate Vim mode. It has a passionate community around it which makes it easy to extend the bare-bones tool with vim plugins. The best thing about Vim is you can use it no matter the environment you find yourself. **What do you dislike about Vim?** If you are just getting started. It has quite a steep learning curve. I have found that in my opinion it works best to start knowing just a few shortcuts to get started and keep adding to them with time. **Recommendations to others considering Vim:** If you can endure the learning curve involved with learning to use this tool, your productivity stands to benefit greatly from it. You can try it out at the basic level by activating Vi mode in your current editor or IDE (there's probably a plugin / inbuilt way of doing that) and once you get used to its navigations and other fundamental productivity features, move to actually using Vim. **What problems is Vim solving and how is that benefiting you?** I use this tool for quick editing of text files both on locally and on remote servers. ### 29. The best editor, ever. **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Siddharth K. | Software Engineering Intern, Information Technology and Services, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 15, 2015 **What do you like best about Vim?** The speed, the simplicity, and the lack of having to use a mouse. These things are so core to the usage of vim that just about anyone who is sighing every time they have to move their hand off the keyboard to the mouse to do something belongs in Vim. I will concede that this is an editor that needs to be configured, and it's not a one-time activity. You need to keep tweaking stuff, changing key mappings, and everything else everyday. I myself have come out to start tweaking my editor and updating my dotfiles on GitHub roughly once a week. There are some good guides about all the plugins that you need to install to get vim to be as close to an IDE as you would like. (https://github.com/jez/vim-as-an-ide and http://vimawesome.com) I don't like full-fledged IDEs too much and would like the build cycle to be separate from the text-editing stage of app-development. So, I have a limited set of plugins that I keep updating everyday depending on what I find missing. I know that there will come a day when this will become the last configuration I use and the config file will stop changing as often as before. ( https://github.com/icyflame/dotfiles/blob/master/vimrc.symlink ) **What do you dislike about Vim?** There is nothing I really dislike about Vim. When starting out a lot of people may say that the key mappings to ZZ, w, hjkl etc don't make sense and they don't like it. But give yourself some time, and you will understand that these mappings are not just on the basis of whim but because someone actually used it and realized this was the fastest way to write code, without having to think a lot about the housekeeping stuff. **Recommendations to others considering Vim:** Take your time with setting Vim up. This can take a couple weeks, that's okay. Take your time, and blend into the editor. Know what you want, find plugins for that, install it, rinse and repeat. Eventually, you will hit a configuration that gives you everything you want, nothing more, nothing less. A good point to start might be a famous dotfile on GitHub. (https://github.com/dotfiles) **What problems is Vim solving and how is that benefiting you?** I am a full-stack web developer and also, research in robotics. I mostly write Ruby, HTML, C++, Python, and Markdown for any other non-code prose. Vim has increased my productivity a lot. I don't have to wrestly with a heavy GUI editor like Sublime or Atom. And also, familiarity with Vim, gives me a lot more leeway on the things I can do on a server I have SSH access to. It's almost like my own PC, and I feel more at ease with Vim. Any other editor (Gedit is the favorite among others) simply slows down the speed at which you work. ### 30. It deserves the title: The God of editors **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Liu H. | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 16, 2015 **What do you like best about Vim?** 1. The speed. It can startup in 600ms even when I have install about 100 plugins, It's also amazing fast when edit large files. 2. Powerful and reasonable keyboard shortcuts. With the shortcuts, you can throw away your mouse and greatly speed the editing process. 3. Extensibility. With vim script, you can easily add new feature to vim and use it as a IDE. With vbundle or neobundle, install/uninstall plugins for vim is easier than install a software. **What do you dislike about Vim?** 1. When set fold method to syntax, it's really slow for large files. 2. Poor support for IME. It's annoying to have to switch between different input method when edit non-English text. **Recommendations to others considering Vim:** Maybe it's hard to learn, but once you grasp it, you will get the benefit all your life, just like swimming. **What problems is Vim solving and how is that benefiting you?** I use vim to write c++, python, xml, easy to format code, auto-completion, snippet support and so on. ### 31. All-in-one text editor **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Georgios G. | IC Digital Design Engineer, Semiconductors, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 01, 2015 **What do you like best about Vim?** Flexibility and customisation ability and at the same time not so keyboard-intensive as other text editors. You can automate repetitive editing tasks, even have Vim generate skeleton files for specific file types. Very good documentation and community size. Present in most Linux distributions by default. I especially enjoy Vim because it's console oriented, since I like/am used to work mostly on the command line. No need for mouse usage! **What do you dislike about Vim?** Big learning curve. Many commands are not intuitive. Lack of some out of the box integration with other tools frequently used with Vim (eg git, svn etc). **Recommendations to others considering Vim:** Customize Vim to your needs incrementally. Store the Vim configuration file and every time you need something more just add it up to the configuration. Keeping different configurations for different kinds of editing may also come handy and help you organize your work flow. Don't get afraid to go deep into the advanced features of Vim, this is where the biggest part of the benefit comes from. **What problems is Vim solving and how is that benefiting you?** Vim boost my productivity in editing source code and configuration files. Also browsing code is a piece of cake when used alongside with (c/g)tags. ### 32. Classics never get old **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Ramón L. | Analista de Sistemas, Information Technology and Services, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** February 10, 2016 **What do you like best about Vim?** Vim is the text editor that you simply can't stop using, It can save you a lot of time if you find yourself in a machine that has no text editors, it's simple, it's fast. It does what it's supposed to do. **What do you dislike about Vim?** The only downside of vim is obviusly some parts of it's interface, however, this has flaw for some people is just another plus. It's like that ugly dog you loved as a child. **Recommendations to others considering Vim:** I suggest you to watch a tutorial first so you don't get lost when learning the shortcuts and functions vim has to offer. **What problems is Vim solving and how is that benefiting you?** It's just amazing to go into a pc you never touched before and be in the need of an editor. Vim will be there for you, even if it's not, download will take no more than half a second. Not having an User Interface other than a terminal is not an impediment for vim. ### 33. The best text editor ever **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Sergey T. | Back-End Developer, Internet, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 18, 2015 **What do you like best about Vim?** Really great customizability and extensibility. Awesome community. Available everywhere: I use it on development machine and on servers. **What do you dislike about Vim?** Problems with encoding on Windows (can be solved but I think such thing should work out of the box). No centralized package repository (something like Homebrew on OS X, "Vim Scripts" doesn't count). And the worst thing: it is impossible switch to another editor if mastered Vim. You constantly trying to execute Vim command and it's annoying :) **Recommendations to others considering Vim:** Don't give up if you just stared to learn vim and think it's too complicated. Time spent on learning will be rewarded handsomely. **What problems is Vim solving and how is that benefiting you?** I'm using Vim to write code on all my projects. Also I'm using Vim as general-purpose text editor. Vim greatly increases the speed of the text (but only after a certain time spent learning how to use it) ### 34. Vim is one of my best friends **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** James T S. | R&D Engineer, Information Technology and Services, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** February 23, 2016 **What do you like best about Vim?** It's available everywhere, has a very clean interface and can be used for basic through to highly complex tasks. **What do you dislike about Vim?** Learning advanced features requires a bit more dedication than I often have. My user skills with vim haven't improved much in the many years I've used it. **Recommendations to others considering Vim:** Take the time to find yourself a half-decent cheatsheet. Once you know how to use it, it's addictively productive. It's also great to be able to use, since it's installed on so many Unix-based systems from tiny to massive. **What problems is Vim solving and how is that benefiting you?** I use it for easy editing on a daily basis. It helps me work quickly. ### 35. A ninja editor for the previous era **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Computer Software | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 27, 2016 **What do you like best about Vim?** Vim is indispensable when working in the terminal. It offers an enormous depth and will make you feel like a text-editing ninja — if you invest the time in mastering it. **What do you dislike about Vim?** Vim makes some easy things, including the ones which are solved in other products long ago, unnecessarily hard. Interacting with the clipboard? Multiple cursors? **Recommendations to others considering Vim:** Try using it for a week. Then try using other popular editors, such as Emacs, Sublime and Atom — and make your choice. **What problems is Vim solving and how is that benefiting you?** I am using Vim only for short tasks like editing a config file from a terminal. My editor of choice for larger problems is Sublime. ### 36. Vim: Standing Tall after Decades **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Electrical/Electronic Manufacturing | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 19, 2016 **What do you like best about Vim?** Vim is lightweight and very efficient if you know all the tricks. Some of the most efficient power users and programmers I've known prefer Vim. It's also pretty much guaranteed that any version of Linux you come in contact with will at least have Vi installed. This is especially useful on headless systems where graphical text editors aren't really an option. **What do you dislike about Vim?** The learning curve for Vim is extremely steep, especially for someone who was raised in the graphical era of computers. I've been using Vim off and on for several years and still haven't memorized most of the shortcuts, even after spending several multiple-hour sessions trying to learn them. **Recommendations to others considering Vim:** Definitely learn Vim. It's slow going at first, but it will be worth it if you can at least make your way around without having to look things up every thirty seconds. **What problems is Vim solving and how is that benefiting you?** I've used Vim for personal projects and at several different workplaces. The biggest benefit of being familiar with Vim is the ability to edit files on remote systems or those without displays. There aren't many alternatives that are as widely available as Vim on these types of systems. ### 37. Enjoy the text typing with VIM, it's my favourate text editor for over 5 years. **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** 裕 . | I&V Engineer, Telecommunications, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 04, 2016 **What do you like best about Vim?** 1. good shortcuts to move/edit the text 2. great customization support 3. good coding support, it is a very good programming editor 4. good support on both Linux and Mac **What do you dislike about Vim?** 1. Builtin search / file explorer operation is not good to use (need a long command), not like sublime text 2. No good real time preview of markdown plugin like Atom 3. Builtin script language is easy to hang on large operation **Recommendations to others considering Vim:** VIM need several hours for you to learn, but after that, it can benefit you the whole life. Now I cannot imagine the work without VIM. **What problems is Vim solving and how is that benefiting you?** 1. Write blog/articles in markdown 2. Python/NodeJS/Html/CSS/Java programming 3. Txt file reading No mouse at all, and the typing is high efficiency. ### 38. Very hard to use tool **Rating:** 1.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Mateusz B. | Frontend Developer, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 02, 2016 **What do you like best about Vim?** It is preinstalled in unix based systems, its also small, user can also install a lot of plugins making vim huge IDE **What do you dislike about Vim?** it's hard to use for new users, using shortucts is also very hard(most of my friends don't know how to exit from the program) **What problems is Vim solving and how is that benefiting you?** low costs ### 39. VIM improve my coding speed **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Computer Software | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 22, 2016 **What do you like best about Vim?** - I can type code faster using VIM compared with other text editor because of editing macros. - Fast search. You only need to type '/' followed by text you want to search in command mode. **What do you dislike about Vim?** A bit hard to learn if you come from other code editors **Recommendations to others considering Vim:** If you want to increase your productivity by speed up your code typing, VIM is the right tool for you **What problems is Vim solving and how is that benefiting you?** VIM increase my productivity by reducing time needed to type and edit code. ### 40. All time favorite IDE **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Vrushali K. | Senior Software Engineer, Information Technology and Services, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** June 06, 2016 **What do you like best about Vim?** Simplicity and ease of use. Ability to customize looks and fonts using vimrc. **What do you dislike about Vim?** Sessions drop on a connection failure with which arises the need for screen or tmux **What problems is Vim solving and how is that benefiting you?** All product development and coding is achieved. ### 41. The best IDE ever **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Janderson B. | Co-founder and CEO, Computer Software, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 25, 2016 **What do you like best about Vim?** Vim is classic and never will be outdated. If you like to use Regex expressions, great keyboard shortcuts and it's really a system's agnostic editor. In some case, like when accessing remote systems through ssh, there's no better option. **What do you dislike about Vim?** The learning curve is always the bad thing, but its not a insupportable pain. **Recommendations to others considering Vim:** Vim is the better option if you always needs to use terminal. If you don't, learning it will be a great differential some day! (= **What problems is Vim solving and how is that benefiting you?** Vim improves team productivity by including great shortcuts, including recurrent code commands, regex, and some high level features in console. ### 42. Simple and flexible, though hard to use from the very beginning. **Rating:** 3.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Mihai V. | Software Engineer, Computer Software, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 14, 2016 **What do you like best about Vim?** As specified in the title, it is flexible as nowadays it contains a significant number of plugins and it is also very fast (if you know how to optimise it and use it wisely). **What do you dislike about Vim?** It is very hard to use from the very beginning, as keywords are very ambiguous and very redundant documentation is provided in the terminal. **Recommendations to others considering Vim:** If you are kind of a geeky person and prefer to code the pro way, go for VIM ! **What problems is Vim solving and how is that benefiting you?** I usually use it for coding purposes or reading code files when I am too lazy to open certain files in a proper IDE. ### 43. Editor for hardcore developer **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Js L. | Software Engineer, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 19, 2016 **What do you like best about Vim?** Each key has it own function. Easily to map the key function to other key. Have a lot of plugin. **What do you dislike about Vim?** I'm very satisfied with it, so far so good **Recommendations to others considering Vim:** Vim has a deep learning curve. However, once you get use to it, it will become your favourite editor! **What problems is Vim solving and how is that benefiting you?** Web development for cloud base system ### 44. Great editor if you learn how to use it right **Rating:** 3.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Computer Software | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 20, 2015 **What do you like best about Vim?** vim has great support for keybinds, modifications, and it is extremely quick. You can customize vim exactly to your liking, and you can even install plugins and add-ons to show your current Git branch or status or show other helpful information. **What do you dislike about Vim?** vim is very barebones and does not come with mouse support and many other elements that many people expect from an editor. You will need to put in a large initial investment to get started with vim. **Recommendations to others considering Vim:** Use it as your main editor for a couple months to get used to the editor, and make sure to customise it to your liking in order to ensure that you are taking advantage of all the features of vim. Many beginners make the mistake of using vim as it comes out of the box. You should rather customise it according to your needs. **What problems is Vim solving and how is that benefiting you?** vim is an editor that many developers and sysadmins like to use for its speed, reliability, and customisability. I've recently started using vim more often, and I have reaped the benefits of its speed for features such as search, and also its customisable interface with Git branch indicators and trailing whitespace warnings. ### 45. Awesome but takes some time to get setup **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Internet | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 19, 2016 **What do you like best about Vim?** Never having to take your hands off the keyboard **What do you dislike about Vim?** Needs plugins to make it useful. This takes a lot of work to setup. **Recommendations to others considering Vim:** Definitely learn the keybindings. But it may be easier to just use Atom with Vim keybindings. **What problems is Vim solving and how is that benefiting you?** Makes editing code so much easier. ### 46. vi for windows **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Computer Software | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 25, 2016 **What do you like best about Vim?** it's good to be able to use use vi in windows so I don't have to use notepad. **What do you dislike about Vim?** It would be nice to be able to use this on the command line without having to bring up a gui. **Recommendations to others considering Vim:** if you like vi and miss it in Windows then use vim! **What problems is Vim solving and how is that benefiting you?** be able to use vi in windows same as in linux ### 47. 5 years experience use of vim **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Isaac Z. | Product Specialist, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 03, 2016 **What do you like best about Vim?** 1. Design of mode. 2. Key mapping. 3. Motion. **What do you dislike about Vim?** 1. vimL. 2. Design of buffer. 3. Single-Threaded 4. Intern with other software **Recommendations to others considering Vim:** IMO, NeoVim is good substitute of Vim. Vim should study those following point from neovim 1. embedded terminal 2. Multi-threaded. 3. more powerful script language **What problems is Vim solving and how is that benefiting you?** 1. Edit my configuration file. 2. Edit some simple file. 3. For some simple program. 4. vim motion operation everywhere. such as: zsh, emacs, and vim of course. ### 48. Vim nice powerful text editor **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Fernando V. | PC technician, Internet, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 18, 2015 **What do you like best about Vim?** Speed, you can do many things with few strokes. Without using mouse in many cases. It´s portable, so you can carry it everywhere. Makes editing very fast, being a simple editor no gui involved make see clearly all commands in a row. **What do you dislike about Vim?** Learnig how to use it may be a little difficult at first. Once the basics are acquaried everything is easier. Every time you start to learn to use a new language/program you have to remember many different ways to do things. **Recommendations to others considering Vim:** Vim gives you control over what you are doing, no need for fancy windows or fancy commands, you go straight to what you need **What problems is Vim solving and how is that benefiting you?** While checking program/scripts errors/mistakes it is easier to correct them. Being an open sorce made. changes to the editor involving users feedback make more friendly ### 49. perfect. 10/10 **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Michael U. | Webmaster, Biotechnology, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 13, 2016 **What do you like best about Vim?** I love the command-based workflow compared to emac's shortcut-based workflow. I also love the freedom and customization. It can be very fast when you learn how to use it well. **What do you dislike about Vim?** There's a high learning curve, but it's worth it. It can be tough to use some parts, but that will come with practice. It can also be hard to use/look at without getting into modifying the .vimrc. **Recommendations to others considering Vim:** Look at others' dotfiles on github **What problems is Vim solving and how is that benefiting you?** It can be run on nearly any platform. ### 50. A great text editor speeds up your code editing **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Telecommunications | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 01, 2015 **What do you like best about Vim?** All common editing functions are on your fingertips. It supports macros (map keystrokes) which automate part of your trivial job. You can write pseudo code and modify your target text automatically. The keystrokes can be written in a text file and finally allows you to edit your target text without opening it. It can store up to 10 delete buffers and up to 26 named buffers that you can easily use even through macros. You can easily create your own syntax files and see your special text files in color. Supports X-windows interface (vim -g). Easily it captures and imports the screen output of the OS commands inside your text document. **What do you dislike about Vim?** Too many key commands that make it difficult to remember. The whole keyboard is mapped to editing commands. **Recommendations to others considering Vim:** It is a little difficult to adopt it especially if you are a user of powerful windows editors like Notepad++. Once you have learnt how to use it you will stuck with it. If you are familiar with the basic vi Unix editor this is a major improvement. I'm using this editor since 1991 for editing in Unix and Windows. **What problems is Vim solving and how is that benefiting you?** You can easily edit source code from a previous project and adapt it to a new one. You can automate trivial editing actions and produce source code quickly. Allows you to search and replace with extended regular expressions. Ideal for execute and log the OS commands. ## Vim Discussions - [Is vim any good?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/is-vim-any-good) - 1 comment, 1 upvote - [what is the fastest way to use VIM](https://www.g2.com/discussions/52195-what-is-the-fastest-way-to-use-vim) - 1 comment, 1 upvote - [What is Vim used for?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/what-is-vim-used-for) - 1 comment - [What can Vim be used for?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/what-can-vim-be-used-for) - 1 comment - [View Vim pricing details and edition comparison](https://www.g2.com/products/vim/reviews?page=5§ion=pricing&secure%5Bexpires_at%5D=2026-05-24+18%3A01%3A22+-0500&secure%5Bsession_id%5D=65ca43f4-691f-4c7b-afd3-e4dfb37e035d&secure%5Btoken%5D=f966d1a9c62b196bf447b36d2e24437e7bc0a9f6f8a80241166defa9a3a6d95a&format=llm_user) ## Vim Features **Data Management** - Health Data Exchange - Regulation & Compliance - User Access **Operations Management** - Third-Party Software Integrations - System Interoperability - Integration Services - Interface Status Updates - Operational Support **Agentic AI - Healthcare Integration Engines** - Autonomous Task Execution - Natural Language Interaction ## Top Vim Alternatives - [NexHealth](https://www.g2.com/products/nexhealth/reviews) - 4.8/5.0 (99 reviews) - [Redox](https://www.g2.com/products/redox/reviews) - 3.9/5.0 (35 reviews) - [Iguana](https://www.g2.com/products/iguana/reviews) - 4.5/5.0 (40 reviews)