In addition to the other tools people have mentioned, Vim supports this with tpope's vim-fugitive (:Gdiff) To answer your question, "... why not?": * oftentim

In addition to the other tools people have mentioned, Vim supports this with tpope's vim-fugitive (:Gdiff) To answer your question, "... why not?": * oftentimes when I'm writing code I'd rather split the screen with another relevant file * sometimes the diff is irrelevant (I started from scratch, or primarily added code instead of modifying or removing it) * other times, it's enough to know only that a line has changed. I've configured Vim (with vim-git-gutter) to show symbols next to added and removed lines