Vim vs Visual Studio Code

Overview

Vim

Stacks27.9K

Followers22.8K

Votes2.4K

Visual Studio Code

Stacks186.5K

Followers169.1K

Votes2.3K

GitHub Stars178.2K

Forks35.9K

Vim vs Visual Studio Code: What are the differences?

Vim and Visual Studio Code are both popular text editors used by programmers and developers. While they have some similarities, they also have several key differences that set them apart.

User Interface: Vim has a terminal-based user interface, which means it runs in the command line. It has a minimalistic design and is known for its efficient keyboard shortcuts. Visual Studio Code, on the other hand, has a graphical user interface with various panels and menus. It provides a modern and intuitive interface with a wide range of features.
Extensibility and Customization: Vim is highly extensible and customizable through its rich set of plugins and configuration options. It allows users to enhance its functionality and tailor it to their specific needs. Visual Studio Code is also extensible, but it takes customization to a whole new level with its vast marketplace of extensions. Users can easily find and install extensions for different programming languages, themes, and other functionalities.
Learning Curve: Vim has a steep learning curve as it requires users to remember and master a large number of keyboard shortcuts and commands. However, once mastered, Vim can greatly increase productivity. Visual Studio Code has a relatively shallow learning curve, especially for beginners. It provides a familiar interface with intuitive features, making it easier to get started.
Integration and Ecosystem: Vim seamlessly integrates with other command-line tools and can be used in conjunction with version control systems like Git. It has a strong and mature ecosystem with a dedicated community. Visual Studio Code integrates with a wide range of tools and frameworks and provides built-in support for Git. It has a thriving ecosystem with numerous extensions and a large online community.
Debugging and Development Tools: Vim is primarily a text editor with minimal debugging capabilities. It does not provide built-in debugging tools and requires external tools for debugging. Visual Studio Code, on the other hand, offers powerful built-in debugging tools for various languages and frameworks. It provides an integrated development environment (IDE) experience with features like code navigation, IntelliSense, and more.
Platform Support: Vim is available on almost all major operating systems, including Linux, macOS, and Windows. It can be easily installed and used across different platforms. Visual Studio Code is also available on multiple platforms, making it a versatile choice for developers.

In summary, Vim is a powerful and efficient text editor with a steep learning curve, while Visual Studio Code is a highly customizable and feature-rich editor with a more user-friendly interface. The choice between the two ultimately depends on the user's preferences, requirements, and familiarity with keyboard-driven workflows.

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Advice on Vim, Visual Studio Code

Kamaleshwar

Software Engineer at Dibiz Pte. Ltd.

Jul 8, 2020

Decided

Visual Studio Code became famous over the past 3+ years I believe. The clean UI, easy to use UX and the plethora of integrations made it a very easy decision for us. Our gripe with Sublime was probably only the UX side. VSCode has not failed us till now, and still is able to support our development env without any significant effort.

Goland being paid, as well as built only for Go seemed like a significant limitation to not consider it.

1.36M views1.36M

Comments

Walter

Jan 12, 2021

Review

Neovim can basically do everything Vim can with one major advantage - the number of contributors to the code base is just so much wider (Vim is ~100% maintained only by B. Mooleanaar). Whatever you learn for Neovim you can also apply to Vim and vice versa.
And of course there is the never ending Vim vs Emacs controversy - but better not get into that war.

162k views162k

Comments

Rogério

Software Developer

Jan 9, 2021

Needs adviceon

Visual Studio Code

Atom

Node.js

For a Visual Studio Code/Atom developer that works mostly with Node.js/TypeScript/Ruby/Golang and wants to get rid of graphic-text-editors-IDE-like at once, which one is worthy of investing time to pick up?

I'm a total n00b on the subject, but I've read good things about Neovim's Lua support, and I wonder what would be the VIM response/approach for it?

372k views372k

Comments

Detailed Comparison

Vim	Visual Studio Code
Vim is an advanced text editor that seeks to provide the power of the de-facto Unix editor 'Vi', with a more complete feature set. Vim is a highly configurable text editor built to enable efficient text editing. It is an improved version of the vi editor distributed with most UNIX systems. Vim is distributed free as charityware.	Build and debug modern web and cloud applications. Code is free and available on your favorite platform - Linux, Mac OSX, and Windows.
Vertically Split Windows;Vimdiff;Folding;Plugins;Flexible Indenting;Unicode	Combines UI of a modern editor with code assistance and navigation; Integrated debugging experience
Statistics
GitHub Stars -	GitHub Stars 178.2K
GitHub Forks -	GitHub Forks 35.9K
Stacks 27.9K	Stacks 186.5K
Followers 22.8K	Followers 169.1K
Votes 2.4K	Votes 2.3K
Pros & Cons
Pros 347 Comes by default in most unix systems (remote editing) 328 Fast 312 Highly configurable 297 Less mouse dependence 247 Lightweight Cons 8 Ugly UI 5 Hard to learn	Pros 341 Powerful multilanguage IDE 310 Fast 194 Front-end develop out of the box 158 Support TypeScript IntelliSense 142 Very basic but free Cons 46 Slow startup 29 Resource hog at times 20 Poor refactoring 14 Poor UI Designer 11 Weak Ui design tools

What are some alternatives to Vim, Visual Studio Code?

Sublime Text

Sublime Text is available for OS X, Windows and Linux. One license is all you need to use Sublime Text on every computer you own, no matter what operating system it uses. Sublime Text uses a custom UI toolkit, optimized for speed and beauty, while taking advantage of native functionality on each platform.

Atom

At GitHub, we're building the text editor we've always wanted. A tool you can customize to do anything, but also use productively on the first day without ever touching a config file. Atom is modern, approachable, and hackable to the core. We can't wait to see what you build with it.

Notepad++

Notepad++ is a free (as in "free speech" and also as in "free beer") source code editor and Notepad replacement that supports several languages. Running in the MS Windows environment, its use is governed by GPL License.

Emacs

GNU Emacs is an extensible, customizable text editor—and more. At its core is an interpreter for Emacs Lisp, a dialect of the Lisp programming language with extensions to support text editing.

Brackets

With focused visual tools and preprocessor support, it is a modern text editor that makes it easy to design in the browser.

Neovim

Neovim is a project that seeks to aggressively refactor Vim in order to: simplify maintenance and encourage contributions, split the work between multiple developers, enable the implementation of new/modern user interfaces without any modifications to the core source, and improve extensibility with a new plugin architecture.

VSCodium

It is a community-driven, freely-licensed binary distribution of Microsoft’s editor VSCode.

TextMate

TextMate brings Apple's approach to operating systems into the world of text editors. By bridging UNIX underpinnings and GUI, TextMate cherry-picks the best of both worlds to the benefit of expert scripters and novice users alike.

gedit

gedit is the GNOME text editor. While aiming at simplicity and ease of use, gedit is a powerful general purpose text editor.

Kakoune

Kakoune is a code editor heavily inspired by Vim, as such most of its commands are similar to vi’s ones. Kakoune can operate in two modes, normal and insertion. In insertion mode, keys are directly inserted into the current buffer. In normal mode, keys are used to manipulate the current selection and to enter insertion mode.

Related Comparisons

Vim vs Visual Studio Code: What are the differences?

Vim and Visual Studio Code are both popular text editors used by programmers and developers. While they have some similarities, they also have several key differences that set them apart.

User Interface: Vim has a terminal-based user interface, which means it runs in the command line. It has a minimalistic design and is known for its efficient keyboard shortcuts. Visual Studio Code, on the other hand, has a graphical user interface with various panels and menus. It provides a modern and intuitive interface with a wide range of features.
Extensibility and Customization: Vim is highly extensible and customizable through its rich set of plugins and configuration options. It allows users to enhance its functionality and tailor it to their specific needs. Visual Studio Code is also extensible, but it takes customization to a whole new level with its vast marketplace of extensions. Users can easily find and install extensions for different programming languages, themes, and other functionalities.
Learning Curve: Vim has a steep learning curve as it requires users to remember and master a large number of keyboard shortcuts and commands. However, once mastered, Vim can greatly increase productivity. Visual Studio Code has a relatively shallow learning curve, especially for beginners. It provides a familiar interface with intuitive features, making it easier to get started.
Integration and Ecosystem: Vim seamlessly integrates with other command-line tools and can be used in conjunction with version control systems like Git. It has a strong and mature ecosystem with a dedicated community. Visual Studio Code integrates with a wide range of tools and frameworks and provides built-in support for Git. It has a thriving ecosystem with numerous extensions and a large online community.
Debugging and Development Tools: Vim is primarily a text editor with minimal debugging capabilities. It does not provide built-in debugging tools and requires external tools for debugging. Visual Studio Code, on the other hand, offers powerful built-in debugging tools for various languages and frameworks. It provides an integrated development environment (IDE) experience with features like code navigation, IntelliSense, and more.
Platform Support: Vim is available on almost all major operating systems, including Linux, macOS, and Windows. It can be easily installed and used across different platforms. Visual Studio Code is also available on multiple platforms, making it a versatile choice for developers.

Vim vs Visual Studio Code

Overview