TrustRadius Insights for Vim are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, third party data sources.
Business Problems Solved
Vim has become the go-to text editor for users across various domains. With its quick and efficient editing capabilities, many users consider Vim their primary text editor and daily driver. Non-technical users find value in Vim's ability to reformat spreadsheet-style data into multiple lines with a non-standard delimiter, while developers rely on it for making quick edits to files like .bash_profile or editing text directly on Linux-based servers. Although its prevalence has decreased with the adoption of continuous deployment, Vim remains an indispensable tool for configuration management and development teams when debugging deployed software on servers. Additionally, Vim is widely used as a convenient editor in remote Linux servers where a full development environment may not be available. The streamlined text entry and manipulation capabilities of Vim make it the preferred choice for many programmers and network engineers when editing text files. Despite the learning curve, some users consider Vim their dream editor due to its potential for efficient text editing and coding speed. Moreover, Vim enables shared development workflows such as pair programming by providing a consistent Tmux/Vim setup on shared development machines.
Vim is the primary code editor used for all of our backend development. While VSCode is used on the front end, the developers for the backend prefer the speed and power of vim. It solves all of our use cases.
Pros
Syntax highlighting
Working in every environment
Easy navigation
Cons
Being able to jump to function and symbol definitions in all languages
Better file management
Easier undo config
Likelihood to Recommend
Once you know how to use vim, you can edit any file on any Linux-based machine with ease.
VIM is used as an editor all over the whole organization, mostly used as a convenient editor in remote Linux servers. Usually, a full development environment does not exist in those servers. Vim, which is bundled in most of the Linux distributions, comes as a handy tool in those environments. Some people, including me, use it as the main editor, even the main development environment.
Pros
Lightweight
Bundled in most Linux distributions.
Very efficient once you get familiar with it.
Cons
Steep learning curve.
Likelihood to Recommend
Vim is very efficient in editing not only codes but all kinds of documents. Powered by lots of plugins, Vim can easily become a professional IDE for virtually any languages. With keyboard-centric design in mind, experienced users can always stick their hands in the keyboard, without moving their hands between the keyboard and the mouse, which greatly boost efficiency.
VU
Verified User
Engineer in Information Technology (501-1000 employees)
Vim is something that many of our programmers and network engineers use to edit text files. Some of us are using it because it's the default text editor for many of our systems; I use it because it is my preference. The product is mostly used because it can speed up the process of coding or editing text in comparison to Notepad or other text editors.
Pros
Fast editing.
Modular capabilities.
Cons
Steep learning curve.
Too many options (overwhelming).
Likelihood to Recommend
Vim is well suited to anyone who needs to quickly modify text (programmers, network engineers, systems administrators, etc). I would recommend Vim in any situation where you need a text editor that is lightweight, fast, and extensible. I would not recommend it in use cases where you'd use a word processor, or in a group where technical acumen isn't especially high.
VU
Verified User
Engineer in Information Technology (1001-5000 employees)
Many developers at my company use Vim as their main text editor. Besides the individual benefits of working alone with Vim, the fact that many of us are familiar with it enables workflows where we have shared development machines running a consistent Tmux/Vim setup that developers can collaborate on for pair programming by SSH'ing in, even if one or both developers is working remotely. This would not be practical using a graphical text editor.
Pros
The efficient modal editing makes it very fast to write/edit code as I think of it.
The customization and wide range of plugins let me do very specific things and automate parts of my workflow.
The fact that it runs inside a terminal simplifies my window management and just becomes another Tmux window in my workflow.
Cons
While the benefits of having a terminal UI mostly outweigh the downsides, it would be nice to have mouse hover and drop-down features like in VSCode. Projects like Neovim and CoC help with this, but there's a long way to go.
Since it is so customizable, the user needs to maintain his or her development setup over time and make sure all the plugins work well together. This can be more challenging if many plugins and customizations are used.
Once you learn Vim well, any text entry field that doesn't use Vim keybindings will feel broken.
Likelihood to Recommend
It has a steep learning curve, but the increase in productivity is well worth it in my opinion. If you work with a fairly consistent set of languages and frameworks, the investment in setting up a quality environment will pay off over time. But if you jump around to many different projects with varying technologies, a more "plug and play" editor may be a better fit.
VU
Verified User
Contributor in Information Technology (10,001+ employees)
Vim is used as the default text editor for our Linux-based servers (Vi alias' to Vim as well). It is used only within the I.T. department, and only when text editing (or viewing text files) directly on servers is required. The reliance on Vim has been reduced in recent years due to the push to a more disciplined continuous deployment paradigm in which changes are only ever made locally on developer's machines and then committed to a source control repository. However, it retains its presence within the configuration management team, and even development teams, when debugging deployed software on servers.
Pros
Vim is incredibly light-weight with little to no dependencies and is almost guaranteed to exist on any GNU/Linux server that you have. You won't have to worry about managing package dependencies to get it on any system that currently doesn't have it. It won't ever hog resources or be the bottleneck in your coding/editing process.
Vim is highly configurable. I would say extensible, but really, it's the configuration and plugin capability that I want to highlight. It can function and look like anything you want - that's why it's so popular even with coders who want to optimize it for everything from C/C++ coding to Python coding. Syntax highlighting, code linting etc are all supported. But for just text editing and viewing, you can make it look exactly like you want - and then because of its highly portable nature, if you use Vim on another system, you can just grab the configuration file and voila! you've got it looking exactly like you had set up in seconds!
Vim promotes productivity. Really, this is a no-brainer. with all it's shortcuts, and ability to map keys to functions, it really makes viewing, editing, selecting, tweaking, text files highly efficient.
It has some esoteric functions that are really useful. So this point is something that I find is underrated. Often times, when transferring files between different Operating Systems, or even moving files using different protocols (saying you're using SFTP to get a file from one spot to another, or then you're storing it on NFS and then moving it locally, etc), you'll get weird issues with the file that may not show up unless you can spot the glyphs visually - that's where Vim comes in. It has the ability to show the corrupted portions of a file in a visual way so you can easily see which portions of the file are messed up
Cons
Although all of this review thus far has been focused on the Linux version, there is a Windows version of Vim. And it's kind of weird. It isn't broken per se, but it certainly doesn't have the same look and feel of the Linux version. Of course, I'm not referring to the fact that it has a GUI, but it isn't really optimized. And that's a shame because users who are trying to get into Vim, but happen to use Windows tend to get a negative impression
The built-in documentation of Vim sometimes tends to assume you already know how to use it, and its jargon can be off-putting for newcomers. There is a plethora of amazing how-to's out there online, which is fantastic, but the in-line help function is limited, which means you'll be learning Vim, outside of Vim.
Likelihood to Recommend
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.
VU
Verified User
Employee in Information Technology (201-500 employees)
Vim is my dream editor if I could ever get in touch with it fully. Most of the other developers and analysts here don't touch it as it has a steep learning curve. But the potential for such streamlined text entry and manipulation is amazing. Vim can be so close to thinking that the interface can disappear.
Pros
Never leave your keyboard. Vim modes enable you to not only edit, but navigate around a file or even multiple files without taking your hands away from the keys.
It is already installed on every non-Windows computer since... forever. And it is freely available on Windows as well.
Decades of personalization and plugins have been created so you can customize your experience to whatever level you desire.
There is a dedicated community and lots of resources for learning.
Cons
Without a doubt the hardest program to learn. It is a completely different paradigm of thinking compared to other editors
By default it doesn't have lots of fancy features you would find in larger IDE programs like code completion and linking
It lives in the command line so a user has to be comfortable with this interface
Likelihood to Recommend
There is a big investment in learning Vim, but if your career is centered on editing text files there is no better option. If a user takes the time to become adept they can greatly increase their efficiency. It is also nice if you are routinely on different systems as it can be found on workstations and servers alike. If you learn it, you will always have your editor available.
VU
Verified User
Employee in Information Technology (11-50 employees)
Vim, from what I can tell, is used by most developers. That said, Vim is almost certainly not a developer's first choice, but instead is used for convenience when needed. Though I use it occasionally, it is usually used for quick edits of my .bash_profile or things like that--not necessarily editing full length programs.
Pros
Convenience! Vim is built into the Mac terminal, so that's nice.
Quick Edits! Vim takes virtually no time to boot up, so if you only need to edit a line or two, it's a great way to do that.
Looking cool(ish). Vim makes you look like you know what you're doing. Wow!
Cons
Vim isn't great for huge programs, at least in my own experience. There is no autocomplete, no GUI debugger, etc.
Vim's learning curve is certainly an issue.
Likelihood to Recommend
As I mentioned earlier in my review, Vim is great for quick edits and small file changes. It's a good way to do things quickly, but a bad way to do things accurately. Without autocomplete, spell check, and really any other sort of syntax checker, it can be easy to mess up.
We use Vim a couple of different ways. First and foremost, as a data scientist, it's my primary text editor and daily driver. Nothing else I've tried lets me edit text so quickly, particularly text I've already written. Moving lines around takes only a few keystrokes and doing a search/replace type tasks is amazingly flexible.
Many of our non-technical users use Vim as well, though--we have a few jobs that require spreadsheet style data to be reformatted into multiple lines with a non-standard delimiter. I wrote a small function in Vim and assigned it to F6 then distributed that do nontechnical users in their .vimrc. Now, if they need to reformat text, they just paste the text in, hit F6 and copy/paste it where it needs to go.
Pros
Editing text with esoteric, but powerful keybindings.
Regular expression-based search/replace.
Function writing, ie. macros is simple and easy.
Cons
Vim is hard to learn--the keybindings aren't intuitive.
Regular expression support is idiosyncratic.
Likelihood to Recommend
If you're doing any sort of text editing, you should consider Vim--once you climb the learning curve, you'll be faster and more efficient at everything you do. Also, Vim is my default search/replace tool--whenever I need to make changes throughout a document, most often, I'll copy and paste into a Vim window so that I can take advantage of regexp-based replacements.
Vim isn't for the faint of heart, though--it's hard to learn and super complex. If you use a text editor once or twice a month, or just need a simple way to strip out formatting, Notepad will get you where you want to go without all the confusion.
I use it every day as a code editor as I mostly love to work from a terminal rather than jumping to other code editors. It's not used across all the departments, it's based on personal preference.
Pros
No need for a mouse/trackpad.l
I love CTAGS to jump between multiple files.
It provides some great plugins like vim-eunuch and Emmet.
Cons
The difficult learning curve for most beginners.
Feature discoverability like auto-completion is never easy, they should be well documented.
Likelihood to Recommend
It's very lightweight and works great if you're logged into some ssh terminal and you need to open some config or files. It really increases your productivity. It works great for someone working in languages like C/C++/Python. But for Scala/Java it might be bit overhead to use VIM unless all the plugins are well documented on how to install.
