Kakoune vs Vim vs Visual Studio Code

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Kakoune

19
36
+ 1
30
Vim

26.9K
21.8K
+ 1
2.4K
Visual Studio Code

173.8K
158.1K
+ 1
2.3K
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Pros of Kakoune
Pros of Vim
Pros of Visual Studio Code
  • 7
    Multiple selections
  • 7
    Fast editing
  • 5
    Interactivity
  • 4
    Consistency of the underlying language
  • 4
    UNIX citizen
  • 3
    Self documented
  • 347
    Comes by default in most unix systems (remote editing)
  • 328
    Fast
  • 312
    Highly configurable
  • 297
    Less mouse dependence
  • 247
    Lightweight
  • 145
    Speed
  • 100
    Plugins
  • 97
    Hardcore
  • 82
    It's for pros
  • 65
    Vertically split windows
  • 30
    Open-source
  • 25
    Modal editing
  • 22
    No remembering shortcuts, instead "talks" to the editor
  • 21
    It stood the Test of Time
  • 16
    Unicode
  • 13
    VimPlugins
  • 13
    Everything is on the keyboard
  • 13
    Stick with terminal
  • 12
    Dotfiles
  • 11
    Flexible Indenting
  • 10
    Hands stay on the keyboard
  • 10
    Efficient and powerful
  • 10
    Programmable
  • 9
    Everywhere
  • 9
    Large number of Shortcuts
  • 8
    A chainsaw for text editing
  • 8
    Unmatched productivity
  • 7
    Developer speed
  • 7
    Super fast
  • 7
    Makes you a true bearded developer
  • 7
    Because its not Emacs
  • 7
    Modal editing changes everything
  • 6
    You cannot exit
  • 6
    Themes
  • 5
    EasyMotion
  • 5
    Most and most powerful plugins of any editor
  • 5
    Shell escapes and shell imports :!<command> and !!cmd
  • 5
    Intergrated into most editors
  • 5
    Shortcuts
  • 5
    Great on large text files
  • 5
    Habit
  • 5
    Plugin manager options. Vim-plug, Pathogen, etc
  • 4
    Intuitive, once mastered
  • 4
    Perfect command line editor
  • 1
    Not MicroSoft
  • 340
    Powerful multilanguage IDE
  • 308
    Fast
  • 193
    Front-end develop out of the box
  • 158
    Support TypeScript IntelliSense
  • 142
    Very basic but free
  • 126
    Git integration
  • 106
    Intellisense
  • 78
    Faster than Atom
  • 53
    Better ui, easy plugins, and nice git integration
  • 45
    Great Refactoring Tools
  • 44
    Good Plugins
  • 42
    Terminal
  • 38
    Superb markdown support
  • 36
    Open Source
  • 34
    Extensions
  • 26
    Large & up-to-date extension community
  • 26
    Awesome UI
  • 24
    Powerful and fast
  • 22
    Portable
  • 18
    Best editor
  • 18
    Best code editor
  • 17
    Easy to get started with
  • 15
    Lots of extensions
  • 15
    Built on Electron
  • 15
    Crossplatform
  • 15
    Good for begginers
  • 14
    Extensions for everything
  • 14
    Open, cross-platform, fast, monthly updates
  • 14
    All Languages Support
  • 13
    Easy to use and learn
  • 12
    Extensible
  • 12
    "fast, stable & easy to use"
  • 11
    Totally customizable
  • 11
    Git out of the box
  • 11
    Faster edit for slow computer
  • 11
    Ui design is great
  • 11
    Useful for begginer
  • 10
    Great community
  • 10
    SSH support
  • 10
    Fast Startup
  • 9
    It has terminal and there are lots of shortcuts in it
  • 9
    Powerful Debugger
  • 9
    Great language support
  • 9
    Works With Almost EveryThing You Need
  • 8
    Python extension is fast
  • 8
    Can compile and run .py files
  • 7
    Great document formater
  • 7
    Features rich
  • 6
    He is not Michael
  • 6
    Awesome multi cursor support
  • 6
    Extension Echosystem
  • 6
    She is not Rachel
  • 5
    Language server client
  • 5
    Easy azure
  • 5
    SFTP Workspace
  • 5
    VSCode.pro Course makes it easy to learn
  • 5
    Very proffesional
  • 4
    Supports lots of operating systems
  • 4
    Has better support and more extentions for debugging
  • 4
    Excellent as git difftool and mergetool
  • 4
    Virtualenv integration
  • 3
    Has more than enough languages for any developer
  • 3
    Better autocompletes than Atom
  • 3
    Emmet preinstalled
  • 3
    'batteries included'
  • 3
    More tools to integrate with vs
  • 2
    VS Code Server: Browser version of VS Code
  • 2
    Big extension marketplace
  • 2
    Customizable
  • 2
    Microsoft
  • 2
    Light
  • 2
    Fast and ruby is built right in
  • 2
    CMake support with autocomplete

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Cons of Kakoune
Cons of Vim
Cons of Visual Studio Code
    Be the first to leave a con
    • 8
      Ugly UI
    • 5
      Hard to learn
    • 46
      Slow startup
    • 29
      Resource hog at times
    • 20
      Poor refactoring
    • 13
      Poor UI Designer
    • 11
      Weak Ui design tools
    • 10
      Poor autocomplete
    • 8
      Super Slow
    • 8
      Huge cpu usage with few installed extension
    • 8
      Microsoft sends telemetry data
    • 7
      Poor in PHP
    • 6
      It's MicroSoft
    • 3
      Poor in Python
    • 3
      No Built in Browser Preview
    • 3
      No color Intergrator
    • 3
      Very basic for java development and buggy at times
    • 3
      No built in live Preview
    • 3
      Electron
    • 2
      Bad Plugin Architecture
    • 2
      Powered by Electron
    • 1
      Terminal does not identify path vars sometimes
    • 1
      Slow C++ Language Server

    Sign up to add or upvote consMake informed product decisions

    - No public GitHub repository available -

    What is Kakoune?

    Kakoune is a code editor heavily inspired by Vim, as such most of its commands are similar to vi’s ones. Kakoune can operate in two modes, normal and insertion. In insertion mode, keys are directly inserted into the current buffer. In normal mode, keys are used to manipulate the current selection and to enter insertion mode.

    What is Vim?

    Vim is an advanced text editor that seeks to provide the power of the de-facto Unix editor 'Vi', with a more complete feature set. Vim is a highly configurable text editor built to enable efficient text editing. It is an improved version of the vi editor distributed with most UNIX systems. Vim is distributed free as charityware.

    What is Visual Studio Code?

    Build and debug modern web and cloud applications. Code is free and available on your favorite platform - Linux, Mac OSX, and Windows.

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    What companies use Kakoune?
    What companies use Vim?
    What companies use Visual Studio Code?
      No companies found

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      What tools integrate with Kakoune?
      What tools integrate with Vim?
      What tools integrate with Visual Studio Code?
        No integrations found

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        Blog Posts

        What are some alternatives to Kakoune, Vim, and Visual Studio Code?
        Neovim
        Neovim is a project that seeks to aggressively refactor Vim in order to: simplify maintenance and encourage contributions, split the work between multiple developers, enable the implementation of new/modern user interfaces without any modifications to the core source, and improve extensibility with a new plugin architecture.
        Emacs
        GNU Emacs is an extensible, customizable text editor—and more. At its core is an interpreter for Emacs Lisp, a dialect of the Lisp programming language with extensions to support text editing.
        Micro
        Micro is a framework for cloud native development. Micro addresses the key requirements for building cloud native services. It leverages the microservices architecture pattern and provides a set of services which act as the building blocks
        Sublime Text
        Sublime Text is available for OS X, Windows and Linux. One license is all you need to use Sublime Text on every computer you own, no matter what operating system it uses. Sublime Text uses a custom UI toolkit, optimized for speed and beauty, while taking advantage of native functionality on each platform.
        Notepad++
        Notepad++ is a free (as in "free speech" and also as in "free beer") source code editor and Notepad replacement that supports several languages. Running in the MS Windows environment, its use is governed by GPL License.
        See all alternatives