Ask HN: Is it worth learning Vim in 2026?
38 comments
Do you already do any work over SSH? What do you do if you need to edit any files in that context?
Learning the essentials of vim was the sort of skill that for me took about 10 min per day over a couple months and has come in handy almost every day since then. Can you get by without it? I guess, if you do absolutely everything via a GUI. Or delegate all CLI work to LLMs without ever questioning or second guessing their output.
And yes, I use vim for almost every git commit or interactive rebase. Access to the full power of CLI git is something I value very much and has saved me countless hours. Not to mention using it for editing any config file that’s not part of a repo.
Every time you’re able to keep your fingers on the keyboard instead of reaching for a mouse saves you both time and precious context switching energy.
Learning the essentials of vim was the sort of skill that for me took about 10 min per day over a couple months and has come in handy almost every day since then. Can you get by without it? I guess, if you do absolutely everything via a GUI. Or delegate all CLI work to LLMs without ever questioning or second guessing their output.
And yes, I use vim for almost every git commit or interactive rebase. Access to the full power of CLI git is something I value very much and has saved me countless hours. Not to mention using it for editing any config file that’s not part of a repo.
Every time you’re able to keep your fingers on the keyboard instead of reaching for a mouse saves you both time and precious context switching energy.
Aficionados of modal editing often insinuate that one would require mouse use in non-modal editing. Yet I have always fully keyboard-operated my non-modal editors, whether VSCode in the last 9 years or previously, Sublime and others, all the way back to Turbo Pascal in the late 90s. I don't ever use the mouse in them, whether I'm inside a text buffer or in the Command Palette (or in menus for the pre-Sublime editors back when). For example, F1 is bound to show "hover" doc tips over the symbol that the caret is in. A couple function keys and ctrl/alt/shift-plus-some-mnemonic letter are soo swiftly and easily muscle-memoried, I never felt any need for mousing, or for "modes" and typing just to switch from one to another.
I'm sure once one is used to modal editing, one can be speedy with it. So can I, entirely without modal yet without mousing =)
I'm sure once one is used to modal editing, one can be speedy with it. So can I, entirely without modal yet without mousing =)
I also use VSCode and derivatives. Also mostly without mousing. But I don’t HAVE to, because I know how to use CLI tooling to not only edit files as needed but also handle things like version control — which I’ve noticed a disappointing percentage of my colleagues, even those with a decade in the field, are mystified by. I haven’t touched VSCode’s git integrations, but the astonishment at being introduced to CLI rebasing — followed by interactive rebasing — was eye-opening.
Well for git stuff or any CLI stuff, I just key-chord into the integrated terminal (or alt-tab into my terminal emulator, depending on task) and do the git commands, having the whole "git integration" thing disabled in `settings.json` in the first place..
Yes. For one simple reason: As vi is part of the POSIX standard[1], it is gauranteed to be installed on all unix(-like) machines you may touch now or in the future.
[1] https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/
[1] https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/
It's a handy skill to have if you interact with Linux machines.
You'll need to edit files sometimes, and Vim (or Vi) is usually present. I don't think I've seen an install without it.
The basics (opening files, writing, and closing) can be learnt in an hour. It's enough to make simple changes to .conf files.
You'll need to edit files sometimes, and Vim (or Vi) is usually present. I don't think I've seen an install without it.
The basics (opening files, writing, and closing) can be learnt in an hour. It's enough to make simple changes to .conf files.
Using vim to do this seems silly. Nano is also nearly always present, and doing those “basic” things is 10x more straightforward in an editor that isn’t modal and just gets out of your way.
I’ve often in my career witnessed engineers who’ve cargo culted the need for vim, but they only know how to hit ESC !wq or whatever, and one errant keystroke puts them in modal hell of some sort that, often requiring they just close the terminal and try again.
I don’t begrudge those who want to become power-VIM-users, though it seems wildly awkward to me, to each their own. But if you just want to use it to do the “basics” on ssh sessions, using nano makes more sense. PGUP and PGDN and Home and End and arrows work just fine to navigate, and the bindings for most things are printed right on the screen (except Ctrl-S to save… for some reason, but it works).
I’ve often in my career witnessed engineers who’ve cargo culted the need for vim, but they only know how to hit ESC !wq or whatever, and one errant keystroke puts them in modal hell of some sort that, often requiring they just close the terminal and try again.
I don’t begrudge those who want to become power-VIM-users, though it seems wildly awkward to me, to each their own. But if you just want to use it to do the “basics” on ssh sessions, using nano makes more sense. PGUP and PGDN and Home and End and arrows work just fine to navigate, and the bindings for most things are printed right on the screen (except Ctrl-S to save… for some reason, but it works).
What happens if?
1. The LLMs are down, and you're on call and you need to fix a bug immediately (no mistakes)
2. You're working over serial (The LLMs aren't there to help you and only vi and emacs are available)
3. You're working on an old computer for some esoteric reason.
4. You're going in an interview and they (temporarily) forbid you to use an LLM to check your knowledge on using these tools (as well as programming tests)
If you cannot use these editors without an LLM, (Vim has navigation keys 'hjkl', G/g and so forth which many such tools have adopted), then it isn't a good look.
You don't have to 100% master them but knowledge of them will help when the LLMs have an outage, and there WILL be outages.
Also be careful not to keep relying on these LLMs too much otherwise your programming skills will atrophy. [1]
So the answer is YES, learn Vim, not to boost your ego, but make it a muscle memory so your skills won't atrophy.
[1] https://www.infoworld.com/article/4125231/ai-use-may-speed-c...
1. The LLMs are down, and you're on call and you need to fix a bug immediately (no mistakes)
2. You're working over serial (The LLMs aren't there to help you and only vi and emacs are available)
3. You're working on an old computer for some esoteric reason.
4. You're going in an interview and they (temporarily) forbid you to use an LLM to check your knowledge on using these tools (as well as programming tests)
If you cannot use these editors without an LLM, (Vim has navigation keys 'hjkl', G/g and so forth which many such tools have adopted), then it isn't a good look.
You don't have to 100% master them but knowledge of them will help when the LLMs have an outage, and there WILL be outages.
Also be careful not to keep relying on these LLMs too much otherwise your programming skills will atrophy. [1]
So the answer is YES, learn Vim, not to boost your ego, but make it a muscle memory so your skills won't atrophy.
[1] https://www.infoworld.com/article/4125231/ai-use-may-speed-c...
ya i do definitely agree that learning Vim is gonna help my overall understanding for how things work at a deeper level and also fight back a lot of the “learned helplessness” that i did develop when coding w/ AI to your point
also another thing that i was thinking is that yes short term (maybe the first few months?) i wouldn’t see any benefit… but it would definitely help in the long term and that my coding ability is not just directly tied to whatever the latest model is capable of
Use emacs. Easier to learn.
For some people cua-mode being opt-in and very difficult to discover organically will be a larger barrier for comfort and learning than normal/insert modes and motion commands could ever hope to be.
(10 year evil-mode user who moved to Neovim for other reasons, chiefly performance/LSP nativity/plugin ecosystem vitality)
(10 year evil-mode user who moved to Neovim for other reasons, chiefly performance/LSP nativity/plugin ecosystem vitality)
You just need learn C-x C-s (save) and C-x C-c (exit) to be able to edit files on the command line. It's kind of like nano, except has syntax highlighting.
Not everything in life is about being more productive.
I think it’s worth learning vim, or emacs shortcuts, as an intellectual exercise.
I still save time by editing little code thanks to vim, or vim mode in my ide. And it doesn’t take that long to know the basics. Is it worth it in terms of seconds saved over a career? Perhaps not anymore.
I think it’s worth learning vim, or emacs shortcuts, as an intellectual exercise.
I still save time by editing little code thanks to vim, or vim mode in my ide. And it doesn’t take that long to know the basics. Is it worth it in terms of seconds saved over a career? Perhaps not anymore.
> For anyone who's been using Vim for while AND uses AI to code
Purposefully ignoring the second part.
First, what really matters is the vi part of vim, i.e the idea of commands, text objects, motions,... The rest are very useful features that are nice to have especially in a programming context (quickfix list, makeprg, window and buffer management, macros,...).
The first part makes editing text so much easier. Even in the day of prompting, they're still useful to have in any text editor. It takes typing text from a chore to a fun activity.
Purposefully ignoring the second part.
First, what really matters is the vi part of vim, i.e the idea of commands, text objects, motions,... The rest are very useful features that are nice to have especially in a programming context (quickfix list, makeprg, window and buffer management, macros,...).
The first part makes editing text so much easier. Even in the day of prompting, they're still useful to have in any text editor. It takes typing text from a chore to a fun activity.
Don't think so much about learning Vim itself. Learn vi(m) motions and apply them everywhere. Look for software that supports those vi keybindings, for example Vimium in the browser or the vim keybindings plugin for VSCode if that is something you use. You'll arguably be faster at navigating a computer in general, and if not, you can still get enjoyment of how fast you'll feel. If you decide to go down this route, check out vimtutor.
Pretty much every engineer needs to use Vim/vi when logged into any server, so from that point of view, this shouldn’t even be a question. I don’t think knowing how to use a modal editor in 2026 is a flex anymore, it’s just standard. But if you’re planning to commit to modal editing as a lifestyle, you should be using Helix, not Neovim.
Why Helix and not Neovim?
It’s one of those tools that’s well designed and you don’t need a thousand line configuration file to be productive. The modal editing style is also an improvement over vim/neovim because you do selection -> action rather than action -> selection. Lastly, it’s written in Rust, which is not a plus purely because of that but because it’s a lot easier to contribute code changes to or tweak a modern Rust codebase.
Hard disagree. It is not an improvement - it is a deterioration.
Repeat (dot command .) is far more powerful and general thanks to operator->action.
Much better composability with counts, registers, marks and operators with operator->action
Operator Pending mode has some unique advantages for swipe edits that are painful in a select first paradigm. Ex: `d/foo<CR>`. No fast equivalent in Helix.
Also, if you really want, you can select in VIM and do your job too. Use visual mode with `v`.
Repeat (dot command .) is far more powerful and general thanks to operator->action.
Much better composability with counts, registers, marks and operators with operator->action
Operator Pending mode has some unique advantages for swipe edits that are painful in a select first paradigm. Ex: `d/foo<CR>`. No fast equivalent in Helix.
Also, if you really want, you can select in VIM and do your job too. Use visual mode with `v`.
> i'm assuming everyone codes with AI to some degree
Your assumption is incorrect, even in this forum, which is one of the most pro-AI places you'll find on the internet.
If you think vim is fun (it is), you have my permission to learn it. It's also OK to do things without first asking for social validation.
Your assumption is incorrect, even in this forum, which is one of the most pro-AI places you'll find on the internet.
If you think vim is fun (it is), you have my permission to learn it. It's also OK to do things without first asking for social validation.
It seems like tools like Vim are less about specific productivity gains in isolation and more about developing a particular mental model of interacting with text and systems. Even as AI takes over more of the generation work, the ability to navigate, inspect, and make precise edits efficiently still seems valuable. In that sense it feels less like an either/or question and more like whether someone finds that model aligns with how they prefer to work.
I'm fully onboard the Neovim train. Lua is a much better language than vimscript and there's a lot more interest in Neovim so there's more interesting packages that people create. Regular Vim is probably fine if you aren't gonna put as much effort into customizing it and if you just stick to the tried and true.
I use nvim all the time for code exploration & figuring out what i need to tell the AI. Invest in tools and packages that let you navigate your codebase quickly
I use nvim all the time for code exploration & figuring out what i need to tell the AI. Invest in tools and packages that let you navigate your codebase quickly
Won't touch AI mate, so feel free to ignore me I guess. Vim is still worth learning. It's about the most basic editor short of old school vi; has a plethora of plugins that make it fairly usable and ubiquitous, and finally, learning to turn a plain text editor into an IDE is kind of a rite of passage for programmers. Btw. It's Free. Why wouldn't you want to learn to do more with Free?
I would say I'm maybe marginally more productive with Vim. But as you said, with advent of tools like Claude Code, where one hardly types, I don't think it really matters.
FWIW, I think it's one of the last areas of the software world that gives me true joy. I would suggest to give a try for simple that reason.
FWIW, I think it's one of the last areas of the software world that gives me true joy. I would suggest to give a try for simple that reason.
Yes, if you treat it as an editing layer, not a lifestyle. Motions + text objects + macros give most of the win, even inside IDE Vim mode while AI handles bigger chunks. Keep your config tiny for a while; plugin rabbit holes are the real productivity killer.
It will be worth learning vim in 2076.
I think learning vim is definitely relevant. To me, vim is the fastest and most effective way to navigate and interact with text. Even with AI, I think those skills are not going out of style.
You just have to decide it for yourself. Note that fluency probably takes months, if not years. For me it's not necessary and I'm not going to touch it.
With ever more code coming at you in growing diffs, efficiently shifting it around with Vim becomes even more valuable
I like vi/vim and still use it because on certain systems and containers that is all you have sometimes.
VIM is a basic tool. You need it, also to talk to coding agents in many circumstances.
I use AI to get vim commands!
I use AI to get vim commands!
Vom is extremely overhyped, to the point that some developers feel that they're not true devs if they don't use it. Don't fall for it.
While vim produces efficiencies for developers, that's not the single highest goal in programming.
If you ask this question, I believe you also fell for this narrative.
Learn it, if it intrigues you. But don't feel bad if you don't have any motivation to do so.
While vim produces efficiencies for developers, that's not the single highest goal in programming.
If you ask this question, I believe you also fell for this narrative.
Learn it, if it intrigues you. But don't feel bad if you don't have any motivation to do so.
i have made my decision
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hEU7R-nu9wM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hEU7R-nu9wM
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The complexities of Vim are rather exaggerated IMHO - it's mostly an exercise in keyboard shortcut memorization. It was used principally in all my CS classes back in university, and everyone seemed to acclimate to it pretty quickly.
On the off-chance that you somehow encounter a real world situation where you have to log into a POSIX machine that has no other editors (nano, etc.), you can just learn it then.
I mean you're not defusing a bomb - it's not like you couldn't pull up the shortcut list on your phone and get acquainted with the majority of what you need in a few minutes.
On the off-chance that you somehow encounter a real world situation where you have to log into a POSIX machine that has no other editors (nano, etc.), you can just learn it then.
I mean you're not defusing a bomb - it's not like you couldn't pull up the shortcut list on your phone and get acquainted with the majority of what you need in a few minutes.
> boost my ego & assert my dominance
Any text editor that requires you to learn to use it is not worth your time.
Being honest the real reason i wanna learn Vim is to boost my ego & assert my dominance, so i can tell people "i use vim btw", but also part of me thinks investing time could still pay off for speed, ergonomics, and working over SSH overall...
but a bigger part also suspects the marginal gains i would gain would disappear when more of the work is delegated to AI anyway, like why would i learn Vim if i'm just going to be prompting Opus all day?
For anyone who's been using Vim for while AND uses AI to code (i'm assuming everyone codes with AI to some degree) my question is: Does learning Vim still meaningfully improve your day to day productivity EVEN with AI, or is it mostly personal preference at this point?