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nimz | 6 years ago

Great to hear and congratulations to the team. Amazing persistence. I used to be a huge Textmate fan - it was so revolutionary in its time. Unfortunately, I think it is too late. The Google Trends comparison of Textmate, Sublime Text and VS Code tells the story: https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=%...

discuss

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fookitty|6 years ago

There I fixed it for you https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=%...

maremp|6 years ago

When I was starting with vim, I was searching for 'vim [something]' a lot, from plugins to configurations, trying to improve the experience. I have since switched back to Atom and now to VSCode.

I don't search 'vscode [something]' nearly as much. Most of the configuration options are explained in the interface (both the visual one and `settings.json`). I can find plugins right from the editor and that usually also includes essential information about working with the plugin.

I still use barebones vim for commit messages, and I still find myself looking for how to trigger the spelling suggestions. I never seem to recall the `z=` when I need it.

Just because something is less user-friendly and requires more knowledge or looking for help, it doesn't mean it's more popular.

The Stack Overflow developer survey is probably a more representative sample: https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2019#technology-_-....

workaway|6 years ago

That may indicate users googling how to exit vim.

xapata|6 years ago

That may indicate vim users googling for how-to guides.

snazz|6 years ago

It’s possible that native graphical editors will increase in popularity at some point. There’s probably a niche of people who don’t like the potentially poor performance of Electron-based editors but don’t want to learn (or find that they dislike) terminal-based editors like Vim and Emacs. Who knows? Google Trends isn’t an accurate way to tell the popularity of programming languages either.

TylerE|6 years ago

Sublime Text, is native, isn't?

Sure, much of the API and all the plugin stuff is in Python, but the core is all native C++ AFAIK.

jimmcslim|6 years ago

> It’s possible that native graphical editors will increase in popularity at some point

Panic seems prepared to take that bet, with their development of Nova [1], a replacement for Coda.

[1] https://www.panic.com/nova/

armitron|6 years ago

Emacs is not by any stretch terminal-based. It can work in a terminal, but it also fully supports graphical environments. In fact, I dare say that most Emacs users use the graphical rather than the terminal version.

Example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FWQB_9QcGI0

ViViDboarder|6 years ago

Yea, I try VSCode every so often, but I keep coming back to Vim in my terminal for the majority of my editing, but I actually have been using TextMate 2 (before release) as my GUI editor of choice. It’s simple, fast, and gets the job done.

If I wasn’t writing so much Python, I’d say I have a type.

coldtea|6 years ago

A niche? Tons of people use non-Electron/web based graphical editors.

Visual Studio, Sublime Text, TextMate, BBEdit, SlickEdit, Notepad++, XCode, Vim, Emacs, heck, one could add IntelliJ into the mix...

rosybox|6 years ago

> There’s probably a niche of people who don’t like the potentially poor performance of Electron-based editors

Haven't noticed any performance problems with VS Code, since I started using it everyday maybe 3 years ago. I switched from Intellij based editors to VS Code and before that I used vim for a decade.

jordwalke|6 years ago

You might like to follow OniVim2: https://onivim.io

It is native, cross platform, and not based on Electron. It also uses Vim as the core editing engine.

xipho|6 years ago

Indeed, but not the whole story ;)

https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=%...

chr1|6 years ago

Would be interesting to know which percentage of vim searches are for vim keybindings in other editors. (i know several people who use vim keybindings, but don't know anywone who uses vim itself)

portlander12345|6 years ago

Wow, I had no idea how much the relative stature of Vim and Emacs had changed over my career.

kator|6 years ago

Hmm good point, when looking for a place to retire look for Vim searches!

moocowtruck|6 years ago

wow what is up with alaska 100% vim!! what a state

elliotf|6 years ago

As an aside, I added vim and vi to the trends, which dwarf the others, but show a long and slow decline for `vi`, but a fairly steady state for `vim`. As a vim user that at times wishes he learned emacs instead of vim, emacs is an interesting trend to see: https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q="...

halflings|6 years ago

How much of that is just users searching "how to exit vim" though? :)

Half-joking, but I think it is actually over-estimating the vim user base because there are so many things to search when learning to use vim, whereas the others are much closer to a traditional word processors.

saagarjha|6 years ago

Keep in mind that "vi" has meaning outside of text editors.

Theodores|6 years ago

Pode Vim, an album by Pedro Kimura is popular in Brazil.

Using git with vim also seems a popular search combo.

Personally I am amazed that the younger generation are keen to learn vim. I don't see why as I have gone the other way to only use phpStorm for editing in earnest. For me using vim for code instead of phpStorm is a bit like handwriting instead of typing, a definite loss of formatting and neatness.

The reason I find modern interest in vim so amusing is that there is no compelling excuse to use it. In the olden days when you had to queue to use a terminal in a computer room to enter code you had handwritten on paper there were no 'nano' or other editors, you had to learn and use vi.

I don't believe vi is quicker than a full size IDE but I still use vi, find and grep because I don't fully trust these new IDE tools and I am fairly dyed in the wool as a command line user.

The tools I don't fully understand are the textmate, sublime, notepad++ and other middling editors that don't offer the brilliance of vim or the possibilities of a phpStorm grade editor.

bluedino|6 years ago

I hope sublime doesn't die off (or fade into obscurity)

overcast|6 years ago

They blew it, plain and simple. Development went dark, VS Code swept in and took its place. Sad.

mikl|6 years ago

I’m afraid that ship has sailed.

patrickmcnamara|6 years ago

At least VS Code and TextMate are free and open-source software. Sublime is basically dead and there's no chance of a fork.

Advaith|6 years ago

> Jumped ship to Sublime when it was released because it was evolving much quicker. Was glad to have backwards compat on a lot of things like themes. Still have my modified “Made or Code” theme kicking today. Tried TM2 a ton during the betas but never managed to reach the same level of productivity as Sublime. My muscle memory is too strong now and I can’t find any reason to leave.

That's an interesting comparison. I completely agree that VSCode is the rage right now. Sublime was big 2014-2016. I'm surprised atom isn't as popular (I suspect its because of the awful loading time)

thedanbob|6 years ago

That’s why I never switched from Sublime to Atom, the general slowness was just too frustrating. Not just the load time, but things like opening large-ish files or global find/replace. VSCode kind of feels like how Atom should have been, fully featured with lots of great plugins but also snappy. I still keep Sublime in my toolbox in case I have to open a huge file or something.

WilliamEdward|6 years ago

Nah, I just tried it out and it's great. One of the few good lightweight editors on macos, and might make me ditch vim since i never needed most of its functions. Popularity doesn't really mean much.

Nicksil|6 years ago

Too late for what?

arthurcolle|6 years ago

Dominance of the text editor market. TextMate was pretty meh, Coda I tried and thought was ridiculously overpriced for its total lack of features. Sublime was great for its time, I even paid for a license, but Atom is just too good for its value (free).

But apparently VS Code is becoming extremely popular. I wonder if its literally just because of GitLens (still missing from other text editors).

Disclaimer: RubyMine / IntelliJ for life.