Notepad++, while being a great editor, is very easy to get familiar with. However, being a serious developer, having the most efficient tool is much more important than having an easy tool. Vim’s speed is very much faster than that of notepad++. Moreover, the amount of plugins …
I prefer Vim simply because it's as simple as apps like Notepad, Notepad++, or gedit, but as feature rich as Microsoft Visual Studio. The startup time is quick, the response time is quick, it never freezes. Vim always "just works." Vim can be downloaded in a few seconds (if …
I spent some time learning emacs at one point and found it to have a much larger surface area of required knowledge before being productive. They are similar in that the interface is somewhat "hidden" behind keybindings and commands, but Vim's modal model makes more sense to me …
It is hard to compare Vim to many other packages in the developer's stack of tools. It mainly does one thing, edit text, and does it better than anything else. For instance, you can't really compare it to Visual Studio Code because VS actually has a Vim plug-in so you can …
Vim is a text editor that strives for simplicity. It does that well, but when you need something at the next level, take a look at the above two. Visual Studio Code is a fantastic, free code editor that makes most of my workflow easy.
Vim's keybindings are a lot more complex than Notepad++. With that, comes a whole bunch of capability that Notepad++ just can't match. Emacs is comparable, in terms of capabilities--because Vim is built into so many unix systems, I chose to learn it instead of Emacs. Knowing …
I use Vim for specific use cases and others for their own purposes but all of them are being used at my work every day. Vim has its pros like it's free/open source, has a mouse free interface, is lightweight and fast, and once learned is hard to forget.
I would recommend Vim in any scenario where text files have to be viewed, created, or edited on GNU/Linux computers. Regardless if you need to quickly change a few things in a configuration file, or you need to write up a full document, Vim is great. I wouldn't use Vim to view, edit, or create anything that requires "rich-text". In other words, if you need to format the text (bolding, font colours, word-art, etc), then Vim isn't the tool to use.
I don't consider the steep learning curve to be a hinderance on the overall usability. I would rate this a ten, but to be honest a lot of people do get hung up at the beginning and just abandon it. However, for people who have made the moderate effort to get over the hump, nothing can be more usable.
There is no commercial support for Vim. Thus, it will not get a mark beyond 5. However, community support is very good. You can easily find solutions for most of the problems in the community.
Vim's keybindings are a lot more complex than Notepad++. With that, comes a whole bunch of capability that Notepad++ just can't match. Emacs is comparable, in terms of capabilities--because Vim is built into so many unix systems, I chose to learn it instead of Emacs. Knowing both probably isn't a bad idea, but there's enough to learn in either camp to keep you busy