I've heard the "hype" about vim for years, sometimes from people who clearly (in retrospect) didn't understand what made vim so good. It was not a selling point for me!

I switched to vim about a month ago and am more productive now than I ever was before. I'd fight to keep vim in my toolkit. Modal editing, jump commands, chained actions, macros, tiling, windowing and configurability are just a few of the features I would miss if I had to switch back.

Non-vimmers: Don't get blinded by the hype, vim rocks for practical reasons.

VIM clearly is the most hyped editor nowadays by the hardcore tech circle and imo that plays a big role in its popularity. It has a few runner ups like emacs and Sublime etc, and before it textmate was the tool to use. Of course VIM has been popular for a long time, but only in recent years i see all these high quality resources to learning VIM cropping up and its alot more visible than it was a few years ago.

> I use vim because it gets the job done.

And because it's available everywhere I guess. Without such wide availability (that's what "hype" probably refers to), I don't think it would have been so popular.

I also use vim because it gets the job done, but I completely agree with parent: Vims present day success is due in part to it having a massive culture of advocacy. It's hard to attract new users without hype.