10 engineers on Hacker News describe using vi first-hand: 3 endorse it, 0 regret it, 1 are mixed.
“I was quite happy with the editing efficiency in vi.”
endorse · personal · so-cal-schemer · 2026-11-04 · source ↗ · wrong label?“I've been using it for about two years now, mostly because I can't figure out how to exit it.”
mixed · personal · 2 yr · classichasclass · 2018-12-02 · source ↗ · wrong label?“Took a couple of weeks to get comfortable with it... for an editor you'll be spending hours in daily for decades, it's entirely acceptable.”
endorse · personal · dredmorbius · 2014-05-27 · source ↗ · wrong label?“it had the addictive center of the vi experience... I had been using plain vi before!”
endorse · personal · kemiller · 2011-11-07 · source ↗ · wrong label?“I fully switched from vi to emacs in 1992”
neutral · personal · jjav · 2026-10-29 · source ↗ · wrong label?“vi is what I am forced to use for many linux default editors. I never learned it”
neutral · personal · yipinwong · 2026-10-28 · source ↗ · wrong label?“I've been using vi for over 25-years, and I use emacs as my primary code editor.”
neutral · personal · 25 yr · sawka · 2023-12-10 · source ↗ · wrong label?“I been using vi since 1982 and vim now.”
neutral · personal · 40 yr · eric4smith · 2022-12-27 · source ↗ · wrong label?“It's the same with other tools that I've used for decades: VS, vi, word, excel.”
neutral · personal · 20 yr · zwieback · 2019-03-01 · source ↗ · wrong label?“I've been using VI since 1988, I'm not about to retrain that length of muscle memory.”
neutral · personal · 28 yr · SomeHacker44 · 2016-12-31 · source ↗ · wrong label?