What is your favorite script editor?

A script editor allows programmers to paint their intelligence on the computer. Since the nascence of the computer, there has been no shortage of arguments between developers over the best script editors. Based on my years of experience in programming, I would always choose Vim for my day-to-day work.

To begin with, Vim's popularity among programmers is indisputable. Vim is nothing more than an editor, and therefore, its popularity may come as surprise to many. Such popularity can date back to the early history of the computer when GUI was not widely available and programmers had to edit their codes directly in terminals. Vim was born in such an environment to meet the needs of programmers. Vim's tight connection with Unix-like operating systems and its simplicity contributed to its early success just because every developer had to learn how to program in Vim. Even now, it is still a necessary or good-to-have skill for tech companies.

Moreover, Vim is so powerful and yet so simple. Vim is essentially an editor that comes with features that we can imagine an editor needs to have, including copying/pasting.deleting text, undoing/redoing an action, and saving a document. In addition, since Vim was designed for programmers in the first place, no doubt it provides great support for syntax highlighting for several programming languages. Despite its variety of functionalities, the command is so simple that programmers often report greater efficiency with Vim. Each functionality is bound with a keyboard shortcut that can be easily memorized. No wonder such a design significantly reduces the effort to switch between the keyboard and the mouse for code editing. That being said, Vim may be unfriendly to general users who are not used to typing commands to operate a computer. Its great dependence on keyboard operation may be daunting for newcomers, but once you get used to basic commands to control it, there is always more powerful functionality for you to discover, like searching/replacing text, indenting, keyboard shortcut, etc.

Last but not least, Vim is constantly evolving. A trend in script editors is worth mentioning. Nowadays, people pursue high productivity, and a pure editor itself hardly caters to the demand of developers. Instead, developers also wish to integrate IDE features into a script editor so that they can stay in the same windows and finish all the jobs. Such a trend is so insurmountable and inevitable that even Vim, which is arguably the most powerful editor in its own history, has to surrender. Thankfully, the technical team behind Vim is sensitive enough to notice such a trend and diligent and humble enough to extend Vim to support extra IDE features.

In short, if you are someone like me who needs nothing more than a powerful code editor that comes in handy with your Unix-like operating systems, Vim is definitely the first choice without a doubt, and maybe even better than any other editors that you can download from the Internet. As almost a pure editor, Vim is, surprisingly or not, more popular than many other IDEs that support complex tools according to the survey of PYPL. Guess it is time for you to dive into the world of Vim!