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.
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.
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 =)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
> boost my ego & assert my dominance
I have never met a developer who unironically flexed that they used vim (or one of its modern variants like neovim).
> 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.
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.
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
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)
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.
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?
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.
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.
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 =)
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 like vi/vim and still use it because on certain systems and containers that is all you have sometimes.
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.
VIM is a basic tool. You need it, also to talk to coding agents in many circumstances.
I use AI to get vim commands!
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.
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/
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.
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.
> 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.
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
It will be worth learning vim in 2076.
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.
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.
i have made my decision
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hEU7R-nu9wM
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.
I have never met a developer who unironically flexed that they used vim (or one of its modern variants like neovim).> 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.
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...
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)
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.
Any text editor that requires you to learn to use it is not worth your time.
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?
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.