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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/vi

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.
  - war1025 6y ago
    NeoVim certainly got a lot of press for a while. I think it has faded quite a bit in the past few years since Bram stole their thunder somewhat by integrating their biggest selling points. I am fairly certain I have NeoVim starred on Github. I haven't used the editor except for an hour to try it out when it was new. I use Vim all day every day for work. I would expect a similar situation for many of those stars. Stars on Github really don't mean anything.
kelnos 6y ago
> Neovim definitely has significant market share, you can compare Github stars as one statistic to consider: I would not consider GH stars to be at all indicative of market share in this case. Vim is installed by default on so many distributions that people just use it and expect it to be there. I have been using vim for at least 15 years and I didn't even know its source was hosted on GH until seeing your post. NeoVim, on the other hand, is something that you have to know about and seek out, and in doing so it's pretty likely that you end up on its GH project page, making it more likely you'd star it.

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.
- war1025 6y ago
  NeoVim certainly got a lot of press for a while. I think it has faded quite a bit in the past few years since Bram stole their thunder somewhat by integrating their biggest selling points. I am fairly certain I have NeoVim starred on Github. I haven't used the editor except for an hour to try it out when it was new. I use Vim all day every day for work. I would expect a similar situation for many of those stars. Stars on Github really don't mean anything.

kelnos 6y ago

> Neovim definitely has significant market share, you can compare Github stars as one statistic to consider: I would not consider GH stars to be at all indicative of market share in this case. Vim is installed by default on so many distributions that people just use it and expect it to be there. I have been using vim for at least 15 years and I didn't even know its source was hosted on GH until seeing your post. NeoVim, on the other hand, is something that you have to know about and seek out, and in doing so it's pretty likely that you end up on its GH project page, making it more likely you'd star it.