They are. And have been since the 1970s, and will continue to do so for another 50 years.
Particularly the fixing bugs parts. So often is one bug manifested across 200 lines in 50 different files, and to fix it you need the same 5 exact keystrokes across those 200 lines. vim (or in my case Emacs) macros will allow me to find the fix in the first of these lines where I also define the macro, and then apply in mere seconds across the other 200 lines.
As for writing test cases, copy-paste has worked fine since unit tests became popular in the 1990s, and will continue to work fine for the next 30 years. editor macros are not too dissimilar to copy-paste-edit.
This is patronising. We know what macros are. There’s benefit in general, adaptable tools, even if some tasks can be accomplished with something more rudimentary. That’s not the point. Hell, the software that you’re so proud of writing with vim could very well be superseded by someone using an LLM to do it in a worse, more wasteful way. But it’s the tool that’s there, and it’s the tool that they use for everything else, and it more easily ties into their workflow.
Comments like this are increasingly just the sounds of someone sticking their head in the sand.
Cognitive dissonance from being confronted with evidence they're not actually speeding up, when us non-AI devs are only having issues with managers pushing it from above even though we're not actually falling behind?
Q: How to properly grill a steak?
A: I'm vegetarian; do not eat meat.
Completely irrelevant for the question asked.
But I do feel the need to express how superior I feel about it.
You are trying to save face. You didn’t answer the question. You don’t ‘speak for a tribe of Real Developers That Use Vim’ or whatever. You just aren’t qualified to answer but couldn’t help getting on your soapbox.
I know a couple of vim users at work that *do^ use LLMs for coding tasks. Let me guess, they aren’t from “your world”. They aren’t real vim users. Get over it.
Does that answer the question? Or can you just not help mentioning that you don’t use AI? Because if so, congrats! I’m sure you’re very proud of yourself.
It literally doesn’t answer the question. “I don’t qualify to answer” isn’t an answer. Don’t tell me to “read deeper”. We are all reading the same comment. You aren’t more intelligent than anyone else here.
How are you a heavy vim user if you wonder if vim makes sense with ai? There are so many things to do outside of writing code that vim is used for.
Also neovim + claude code + open terminal pane in tmux is the goated combo anyway. Especially more lately you need to understand the code you are writing if you want to do anything important in software, and the best way to do that is neovim :)
I use jj vcs and now most of my time is spent reading the code, so I use diffview.nvim (https://github.com/sindrets/diffview.nvim) with some customizations for jj to read diffs. I also use the snacks picker/explorer to search for code.
jj with agentic coding is really underrated. The automatic committing is awesome for being able to see diffs between every prompt, roll back changes done by a given prompt, etc.
(Neo)vim is setup wonderfully for this era. Im with Justin on the take that neovim can replace tmux soon literally all that is left is being able to restart terminal sessions on restart (which is even set as a goal for summer of code).
Neovim can already have all the agents running in different terminal buffers or there are plugins popping up every day to have deep integrations with your favorite or we even have some interesting harnesses that are unique to neovim like sidekick.
As always, the ability to compose small tools and edit any file allow neovim to stay relevant and more powerful than ever in my opinion while not forcing workflow changes like the others
What you’re saying is super interesting, I’ve been using my setup for so long I might have missed some of the latest updates.
I spend most of my time on TMUX with Claude Code and vim side by side btw, but I’m using it just to search some specific code and making small changes.
I mostly review on GitHub PRs tbh
I see a lot of valid points, so let me specify better: now that the way we write code drastically changed, did you change anything in your vim setup? Like plugins, habits, anything?
Right now I'm using TMUX with Claude Code and Vim side-by-side, but I mostly use vim to look at the code and make small changes, while I review the code changes directly on GitHub PRs.
And yes, I admit I look at the code less than before. For as much as I'd like to say it's untrue, I'm increasingly spending time in crafting skills to make sure they don't break the code, trusting the Coding Agent more and more, and consequently looking less at the code itself (which it doesn't mean I don't know how it works, I am in a sort of "reviewer mode" as a coworker writes it, with additional care and attention ofc).
So yeah I was wondering how did it change for you and if you think it still makes sense (it's my understanding that the agreement is "yes" apparently, with which I tend to agree!)
It's been many months, and I thoroughly prefer my harness inside of nvim as my day to day development environment. Using Claude code or cursor makes me feel very removed from the code.
Exploring code, gathering context and tweaking prompts/giving guidance to the agent are very much enhanced by neovim.
The biggest boon has been the fact that agents make customizing neovim a lot easier. Writing new bindings, config, and even building novel plugins.
Here's a few that I built that fit into my workflow:
- a file picker that renders in your current window (like oil) and uses more intelligent signals for ranking (like frecency) https://github.com/dlants/needle
Exactly the same as I used it on the age of frameworks, the age of Java and .NET, the age of compilers, the age of ...: you take it by the helve and swing the business end towards the object.
It is more like using skill saw in the age of IKEA.
When you use AI you are not programming, you are having a statistical machine deliver you inferred code which it got by stealing it from everybody else.
This is your carpenter going to IKEA and fitting a cheap furniture slop made by exploited workers in poorer countries, with cheap wood grown on stolen indigenous lands, into your kitchen, when you were expecting custom fit cabinets.
Use it to write and edit code when that makes sense for you to do so. Just like you always have. It's an extremely useful skill to have even still.
I've had much more success with agents reviewing my code and offering inline autocomplete over LSP than I have with letting the agents write the code, which I then try to review. I end up with a much better mental model of the code and higher quality output than either I or the agent could do alone.
but i don't use ai to write code for me -- i use it as a companion thing where i ask questions and then, instead of asking for code, i implement everything myself.
it keeps me sharp and helps me understand the lastest ai stuff.
It makes sense even more. If you never enter "insert" mode, you still have powerful navigation and overview capabilities. `*`, `#`, n/p, :set fdm=indent + zM/zR, gf/gx, :bp, the venerable `}/{` pairing, and simply `C-n/C-p` while composing prompts can be useful.
AI + Prompting can get you there, but it's still fairly laggy. Honestly, VSCode (aka: Cursor) w/ the vim plugin, and `F2-rename` has been the sweet spot for me. Reviewing diffs with `git diff | view -` and browsing them with vim is another useful.
I've barely touched Intellij for the last half year or so. I rarely edit code manually at this point. I also did not renew my subscription and am back on the community edition.
I've noticed that my preferences for tools and languages is shifting as well. I'm happy to work with stuff that I previously would have not touched now because it would take me too long to get up to speed with languages, frameworks, etc. That stuff no longer blocks me from being productive. I still care about code quality, good design, etc. but a lot of that stuff doesn't require me to micro manage a code base. In the rare case I want to open something in an editor, I use vs code. I've removed a lot of the plugins in that as I'm not really using them any more.
I actually do reach for vi on the command line sometimes. But I've never been very good with it. I know how to do simple edits and save the file. I just never really got into it. I memorized a handful of key bindings somewhere in the nineties and that's it. I know some people that live in this editor and swear by it but for me it's just something that's there by default that is vaguely useful in a pinch if there's nothing else.
Tmux with vim as a 50% split, I’ll run an agent in a quarter split.
I have neovim hooked up to a local llama.cpp (through lemonade) for completion, but I have not found a plugin that I’m happy with. Avante is probably the closest because you can give inline instructions, but it both got very very heavily and stopped working with small LLMs so I uninstalled it. I’m using minuet currently.
Codex can also delete all your files if you ask it to.
Just because it can do it, doesn't mean that it's a good idea.
Crazy to me that people are producing code they don't read, expect another human to review it or just let ai take the wheel and review. Then yeet it out the window into prod.
Why are we not ok with this for our cars, but we are ok with this for our software(banking, health care, etc.). Doesn't make any sense to me.
Moved on to vis a few years ago and never looked back to vim/neovim. Granted, it doesn't have all the sparkles of the former, but it's way leaner and snappier - and you can tell there's no ai in it.
I run claude cli inside nvim as my main ide.
It is 3 pane: nvim-tree/editor/agent terminal + popup terminal, I switch M-1/2/3/4 between those. ~700 lines of lua config.
It has editor sync on agent writes, auto format hooks for claude, os alerts, resume claude session, and usual vim telescope/lsp/gitgutter.
Quite satisfied with that, haven't opened vscode/zed in a while. Making something like that is easy with LLMs now.
Usually I keep terminal split open with the agent side by side and make edits by hand where needed or for reviewing the code. Inside the vim itself I have a small plugin that you can feed a block of text with the comment instructing LLM what to do. It then replaces the text with the result of execution. Super useful for small edits here and there that don't require full session. I also have preconfigured neoterm float with the pi agent, that allows me to jump into the session right away.
I don't think anything has changed for me regarding my vim usage. Previously, I would use vim to make simple changes in the code or configuration files, making larger changes in VS Code. Now, with agents, I never need to make larger code changes manually so I completely ditched VS Code, but I keep using vim in the same way as I did before: for small changes which I want to make manually, for editing configs, or as a scratchpad.
I switched from using Vim as my primary editor to using Zed's Vim Mode. When you have a second process editing your project in the background you need an editor that can display those changes immediately without clunky buffer reloads.
I've also customized Zed's UI to optimize for reading and reviewing code, and mostly adding notes or small focused edits, rather than writing entire files from scratch.
On about day 2 of using Fable I realized that the .vimrc I'd been maintaining for 15-20 years would probably never change again.
With Opus I still feel like I'm pair coding and want to get in there and make some changes myself, but working with Fable (even Fable managing Opus agents) had me in a completely different mindset, one where I realized I would just be getting in the way.
A couple years ago I decided to stop maintaining a .vimrc (after ~35 years), and started using LunarVim and later AstroVim with as few customizations as I could live with.
But then around 2 months ago I decided to switch to NixOS and there wasn't a Nix way I could find to use Astro. So I had Opus build me a vim setup for NixOS that included the batteries I wanted in my setup. I gave it a paragraph description and it built something that has been a joy to use.
I am sort of a no UI (except browser) user for a very long time now, and vim is still incredibly useful.
Granted, the language servers are getting dusted, but it's much nicer to write goals in markdown in vim and send it to LLM in a self-written harness CLI; and even look at the results in the same way. All unix. LLM is just the latest toolbox addition.
i use vim quite a bit! I find that in this new era, i'm in the command line a lot and like to stay in the command line. vim (I use neovim) is a good way to do that.
Furthermore, a lot of my workflow is now done on remote servers (i love exe.dev) where claude code is sandboxed to an extent (it can still cause damage, just not to my main computer's file system). When I'm configuring those, i have a setup script that installs all of my vim files just the way i like them, so vim behaves exactly the same on a remote server as it does locally. I can edit things as needed. I can also access claude code on those servers as well. So working on my remote machine feels a lot like workin locally [1].
[1] I'm aware that i can setup cursor or vs code to access SSH servers, but it's just not as easy and doesn't feel as natural, IMO. There's something i like about needing to call `ssh remote-server` first.
Hasn't changed at all since AI agents became a thing. tmux, nvim with a few plugins, mainly fzf and LSP support. If I do use an AI agent, I just run it in another tmux window.
I still use Vim, but totally different from before. I don’t care about efficient movement/editing bindings. All I use it for now is navigating and viewing files.
copilot.lua, CodeCompanion when I want in-editor agents (hooked up to OpenCode), OpenCode web for most everything else. Neovim works fine in OpenCode web's terminal too.
Funnily enough, I have my agent use vim sometimes.
I prefer commits to be granular to the extent that I manually edit the patch in git add -p, albeit rarely. So I have a pty plugin that my agent literally sends control codes to. This is also useful in general for LLMs driving any interactive terminal program. Long live text, I guess.
Vim helps me ground my AI usage to my workflow. It is so pleasurable to edit text with Vim that it keeps me writing skeletons for the AI to fill according to my design instead of delegating design to the AI.
Vim/Neovim have only grown more powerful in the age of AI, not less. I am certain that even 30 years from now developers will still be using some form of vim.
My Neovim + AI workflow is running Neovim (LazyVim) and Claude Code side by side in a terminal split. As the agent makes changes, I review them in Neogit. I don't really make edits by hand much anymore, but the keyboard is still how I navigate the code when doing reviews. I can jump to references, open files, read through the diff very quickly with keyboard shortcuts.
The Neovim/LazyVim speed for writing code turns out to be just as fast for navigating and reviewing code.
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