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Everyone is missing the most important contribution of vi[m].

Vim defines an ergonomic set of rules for text navigation and manipulation, often implemented by very simple key bindings. This is wonderful.

The Vim editor implements all these rules, but the Vim's plugin ecosystem is a disaster. Hacks pile upon hacks. Noone understand Vim scripts. Vim scripts are easily broken and do not interoperate well with other scripts.

These set of rules can be easily implemented by other editors, as evidenced by many IDEs supporting Vim key bindings. Although these editors may not support all the above rules, they are pretty close (see the evil plugin in Emacs) and can replace Vim in daily usage.

The editor war is over. Vim's keybinding is superior. But the longevity of a text editor lies in its extensibility. For this, Emacs wins in the long run.




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