7 ms·

Let's not forget Bram Moolenaar, who also deserves credit for extending the work on Vi. Vim [Vi iMproved] is likely (along with NeoVim) the actual Vi editor mo

Let's not forget Bram Moolenaar, who also deserves credit for extending the work on Vi. Vim [Vi iMproved] is likely (along with NeoVim) the actual Vi editor most people are using these days.

globular-toast 6y ago
This is so often the case with long-running projects. People forget that the much of the work that went into the current product wasn't necessarily done by the original author. Everyone knows git is Linus Torvalds. But Torvalds constantly states that Junio Hamano deserves a lot the credit for making it the tool it is today. It sounds like a similar situation with vim.
zabil 6y ago
+1 and all the plugin authors for writing and maintaining plugins. I find Vim/NeoVim so good for working with JavaScript and Go thanks to it's design and ecosystem.
skohan 6y ago
What's the story with NeoVim exactly? I am trying it out on Linux because I got some recommendations that it's better than Vim, but I've run into some problems because for instance with setting up plugins and things, lots of times the documentation seems to be geared toward Vim, and sometimes I've gotten errors it's hard to figure out because of this. It kind of gives me the perception there just aren't that many people using it, so it might be one of those tools which is technically better but doesn't have the critical mass of community to really be useful. Am I off base there? I mean what are the tangible, user-facing advantages of NeoVim over Vim?
- maximusjesse 6y ago
  Neovim definitely has significant market share, you can compare Github stars as one statistic to consider: https://github.com/vim/vim https://github.com/vim/vim - 20k https://github.com/neovim/neovim https://github.com/neovim/neovim - 36.5k This is in some part due to the fact that neovim has been on Github longer, but it's still a a major indicator. Neovim has many benefits over Vim, and has been applying pressure on Vim for years to improve its own development and codebase. Nvim has first class support for Lua outside of Vimscript, which has enabled a lot of people to write more powerful plugins. A lot of NVim's featureset has been copied into Vim over the years (one of my favorites is the hover window, which has allowed IDE like support for code references/comments/source). Supposedly, Nvim's codebase is significantly easier to maintain and contribute to, due to the nature of having a community of contributors that built it from ground up, as opposed to one primary developer working on Vim. The parity has reduced over the years, but Nvim has been significantly ahead in pushing new features and active development over Vim resting on its laurels.
  - war1025 6y ago
    NVim certainly has it's own cult following, I would expect that it pales in comparison to Vim for actual day to day usage. Glad to see the project is still alive and moving forward. Seems like most new editors or forks in general die a quick death.
    - edanm 6y ago
      > NVim certainly has it's own cult following, I would expect that it pales in comparison to Vim for actual day to day usage. Why? It's a fork of vim, which adds some functionality and removes some functionality. But it's not an entirely new editor or anything.
      - war1025 6y ago
        > Why? Not sure what you are questioning exactly. Why does it have a cult following? Because there are enough people to keep the project going and it makes them happy for whatever reason. Why does it have far less usage than Vim proper? Because it's a young, niche project, and Vim has been around forever. Same reason CentOS and Ubuntu have a far bigger usage share than any of the "trendy" distros.
        edanm 6y ago
        Ah sorry I misunderstood. I thought you meant it has functionality for day to day usage, not just less users. My mistake!
  - qznc 6y ago
    For a nearly 30 year old software like vim, Github stars are not a relevant metric. Vim probably has users who have never even heard of Github.
    - maximusjesse 6y ago
      Yeah, it's not an accurate indicator since various factors play into how many stars Neovim has, e.g. Vim is prebuilt into most OS distros, so lack of a need to download it, Neovim is more contributor friendly, etc. I highlighted this not to show the insignificance of Vim, but rather the rise of Neovim.
- gkfasdfasdf 6y ago
  The built-in LanguageServer client and tree-sitter syntax highlighting features in upcoming releases are going to be interesting.
  - jhoechtl 6y ago
    Thank you. I am sitting my baby on my arm was to lazy to type that. When both of this features stabilize I think they will sufficiently set NVim appart from Vim and make it its own personality. Besides Lua as an alternative scripting language there currently is no compeling reason to switch over.
- war1025 6y ago
  NeoVim was started to add in a couple features that had gotten pushback from Bram when the original forker(?) (long since moved on from the project) got frustrated with getting shot down. Basically the relationship at this point between the two projects appears to be that the NeoVim team implements some features. The ones that gain significant traction, Bram then implements in his own style. At this point they are basically at feature parity with each other I think. The main difference between the two in my experience is that NeoVim is much more likely to integrate existing libraries, while Vim is more of a self-contained project. One of the side effects of that is the NeoVim people like to brag how much code they've deleted from Vim. The thing they don't mention is all the deps they've added in the process.
  - kelnos 6y ago
    > One of the side effects of that is the NeoVim people like to brag how much code they've deleted from Vim. The thing they don't mention is all the deps they've added in the process. You present this in a negative light, and perhaps it's misleading of them to not acknowledge the added dependencies, but this is exactly what I want maintainers of my workhorse software to do. I would much rather they delete their own code and replace it with well-tested, robust dependencies rather than maintaining their wheel reinventions. (Of course, whether or not the chosen dependencies are well-tested and robust is the trick.)
- kingaillas 6y ago
  >What's the story with NeoVim exactly? > I mean what are the tangible, user-facing advantages of NeoVim over Vim? Hard to answer really. I mean, what are the tangible, user-facing advantages of having llvm/clang over only having gcc? of libressl over openssl? Chances are you aren't targeting libclang in your code so does it really matter if it exists, from a user-facing perspective? I recall neovim started like many projects, because some folks wanted to add stuff, clean up, change directions slightly, etc, and the current project at the time basically didn't want to do it. Consider that at some point in the past a person probably asked the same question you are asking, except about vim vs vi. Not 100% sure but neovim added several feature first: a better cross-platform input method (libuv); asynchronous plug-ins; a terminal emulator; probably others - and some of these features have bled into vim. Essentially, pressure and feature competition from neovim has improved vim. Neovim has done a bunch of other cleanup; as far as user-facing advantages it would mostly come down to better plug-in architecture and possibly better plug-ins.
- salmo 6y ago
  What made me adopt it a while back was the work they put into the plugin system. I honestly don’t remember the technical details (better or real async maybe?) But the end result for me was being able to use things like deoplete without the editor pausing on me or missing keystrokes. My guess is these days bringing a newer vim with you vs relying on your distro’s probably has the same benefits. I only use plugins locally and haven’t bothered switching back.
codemusings 6y ago
It's a favorite pet peeve of mine (and very well represented in this thread) that people call it vi when they actually mean vim. I believe on some systems vi eventually became an alias for vim which is how all of this started. Most folks would be very much irritated if they actually had to use vi because of some crucial features missing.

Let's not forget Bram Moolenaar, who also deserves credit for extending the work on Vi. Vim [Vi iMproved] is likely (along with NeoVim) the actual Vi editor most people are using these days.

globular-toast 6y ago

This is so often the case with long-running projects. People forget that the much of the work that went into the current product wasn't necessarily done by the original author. Everyone knows git is Linus Torvalds. But Torvalds constantly states that Junio Hamano deserves a lot the credit for making it the tool it is today. It sounds like a similar situation with vim.

zabil 6y ago

+1 and all the plugin authors for writing and maintaining plugins. I find Vim/NeoVim so good for working with JavaScript and Go thanks to it's design and ecosystem.

skohan 6y ago

What's the story with NeoVim exactly? I am trying it out on Linux because I got some recommendations that it's better than Vim, but I've run into some problems because for instance with setting up plugins and things, lots of times the documentation seems to be geared toward Vim, and sometimes I've gotten errors it's hard to figure out because of this. It kind of gives me the perception there just aren't that many people using it, so it might be one of those tools which is technically better but doesn't have the critical mass of community to really be useful. Am I off base there? I mean what are the tangible, user-facing advantages of NeoVim over Vim?

maximusjesse 6y ago
Neovim definitely has significant market share, you can compare Github stars as one statistic to consider: https://github.com/vim/vim https://github.com/vim/vim - 20k https://github.com/neovim/neovim https://github.com/neovim/neovim - 36.5k This is in some part due to the fact that neovim has been on Github longer, but it's still a a major indicator. Neovim has many benefits over Vim, and has been applying pressure on Vim for years to improve its own development and codebase. Nvim has first class support for Lua outside of Vimscript, which has enabled a lot of people to write more powerful plugins. A lot of NVim's featureset has been copied into Vim over the years (one of my favorites is the hover window, which has allowed IDE like support for code references/comments/source). Supposedly, Nvim's codebase is significantly easier to maintain and contribute to, due to the nature of having a community of contributors that built it from ground up, as opposed to one primary developer working on Vim. The parity has reduced over the years, but Nvim has been significantly ahead in pushing new features and active development over Vim resting on its laurels.
- war1025 6y ago
  NVim certainly has it's own cult following, I would expect that it pales in comparison to Vim for actual day to day usage. Glad to see the project is still alive and moving forward. Seems like most new editors or forks in general die a quick death.
  - edanm 6y ago
    > NVim certainly has it's own cult following, I would expect that it pales in comparison to Vim for actual day to day usage. Why? It's a fork of vim, which adds some functionality and removes some functionality. But it's not an entirely new editor or anything.
    - war1025 6y ago
      > Why? Not sure what you are questioning exactly. Why does it have a cult following? Because there are enough people to keep the project going and it makes them happy for whatever reason. Why does it have far less usage than Vim proper? Because it's a young, niche project, and Vim has been around forever. Same reason CentOS and Ubuntu have a far bigger usage share than any of the "trendy" distros.
      - edanm 6y ago
        Ah sorry I misunderstood. I thought you meant it has functionality for day to day usage, not just less users. My mistake!
- qznc 6y ago
  For a nearly 30 year old software like vim, Github stars are not a relevant metric. Vim probably has users who have never even heard of Github.
  - maximusjesse 6y ago
    Yeah, it's not an accurate indicator since various factors play into how many stars Neovim has, e.g. Vim is prebuilt into most OS distros, so lack of a need to download it, Neovim is more contributor friendly, etc. I highlighted this not to show the insignificance of Vim, but rather the rise of Neovim.
gkfasdfasdf 6y ago
The built-in LanguageServer client and tree-sitter syntax highlighting features in upcoming releases are going to be interesting.
- jhoechtl 6y ago
  Thank you. I am sitting my baby on my arm was to lazy to type that. When both of this features stabilize I think they will sufficiently set NVim appart from Vim and make it its own personality. Besides Lua as an alternative scripting language there currently is no compeling reason to switch over.
war1025 6y ago
NeoVim was started to add in a couple features that had gotten pushback from Bram when the original forker(?) (long since moved on from the project) got frustrated with getting shot down. Basically the relationship at this point between the two projects appears to be that the NeoVim team implements some features. The ones that gain significant traction, Bram then implements in his own style. At this point they are basically at feature parity with each other I think. The main difference between the two in my experience is that NeoVim is much more likely to integrate existing libraries, while Vim is more of a self-contained project. One of the side effects of that is the NeoVim people like to brag how much code they've deleted from Vim. The thing they don't mention is all the deps they've added in the process.
- kelnos 6y ago
  > One of the side effects of that is the NeoVim people like to brag how much code they've deleted from Vim. The thing they don't mention is all the deps they've added in the process. You present this in a negative light, and perhaps it's misleading of them to not acknowledge the added dependencies, but this is exactly what I want maintainers of my workhorse software to do. I would much rather they delete their own code and replace it with well-tested, robust dependencies rather than maintaining their wheel reinventions. (Of course, whether or not the chosen dependencies are well-tested and robust is the trick.)
kingaillas 6y ago
>What's the story with NeoVim exactly? > I mean what are the tangible, user-facing advantages of NeoVim over Vim? Hard to answer really. I mean, what are the tangible, user-facing advantages of having llvm/clang over only having gcc? of libressl over openssl? Chances are you aren't targeting libclang in your code so does it really matter if it exists, from a user-facing perspective? I recall neovim started like many projects, because some folks wanted to add stuff, clean up, change directions slightly, etc, and the current project at the time basically didn't want to do it. Consider that at some point in the past a person probably asked the same question you are asking, except about vim vs vi. Not 100% sure but neovim added several feature first: a better cross-platform input method (libuv); asynchronous plug-ins; a terminal emulator; probably others - and some of these features have bled into vim. Essentially, pressure and feature competition from neovim has improved vim. Neovim has done a bunch of other cleanup; as far as user-facing advantages it would mostly come down to better plug-in architecture and possibly better plug-ins.
salmo 6y ago
What made me adopt it a while back was the work they put into the plugin system. I honestly don’t remember the technical details (better or real async maybe?) But the end result for me was being able to use things like deoplete without the editor pausing on me or missing keystrokes. My guess is these days bringing a newer vim with you vs relying on your distro’s probably has the same benefits. I only use plugins locally and haven’t bothered switching back.

codemusings 6y ago

It's a favorite pet peeve of mine (and very well represented in this thread) that people call it vi when they actually mean vim. I believe on some systems vi eventually became an alias for vim which is how all of this started. Most folks would be very much irritated if they actually had to use vi because of some crucial features missing.