Code editors & IDEsSeed poll by the operator
Microsoft VS Code vs Vim vs Neovim vs GNU Emacs
“Which editor do you actually write code in?”
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- Candidate 1
Microsoft VS Code
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Visual Studio Code
- Price
- Free for private or commercial use
- Platforms
- Windows, macOS, Linux; web at vscode.dev
- Account needed
- Not for core editor; GitHub sign-in for Copilot AI
- Copilot Free plan
- Monthly allowance of inline suggestions and AI credits
- Copilot Pro
- $10 USD per month; 1,500 AI credits
- Copilot Pro+
- $39 USD per month; 7,000 AI credits
- Copilot Business
- $19 USD per granted seat per month
- AI models
- Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, Microsoft, open-weight; BYOK
- Agent harnesses
- Copilot, Claude, Codex
- Extensions
- Visual Studio Marketplace
- VS Code is a code editor; the Visual Studio IDE is a separate, fuller-featured product from Microsoft.
- VS Code is a Microsoft-licensed distribution of the open source Code - OSS project (MIT); Microsoft additions such as…
- Built-in AI features can be hidden with the chat.disableAIFeatures setting.
Sources: Visual Studio Code home page (official) · Visual Studio Code FAQ (official) · Plans for GitHub Copilot - GitHub Docs
Checked 2026-11-03
- Candidate 2
Vim
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Vim
- Price
- Free (Charityware; donations requested)
- Current version
- 9.2.1286 (Vim 9.2 series)
- Platforms
- Unix, MS-Windows, Macintosh, Amiga, others
- Source code
- Git repository on GitHub; source archive
- Scripting language
- Vim9 script
- Plugin scripts
- 6,022 scripts, 22,544,946 downloads
- Undo
- Persistent, multi-level undo tree
- GUI backends
- GTK 2, GTK 3 (default), GTK 4 (opt-in)
- Vim 9.2 was released on 2026-02-14, adding Vim9 script features such as enums, generic functions and tuples.
- The GTK 4 GUI backend landed in Vim master on 2026-05-19; it is enabled with --enable-gui=gtk4 at build time and is…
- Vim is Charityware: the license is GPL-compatible and users are asked to donate to help children in Uganda through…
Sources: Vim online (home page) (official) · Downloading Vim (official) · About Vim (license) (official)
Checked 2026-11-03
- Candidate 3
Neovim
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Neovim
- Latest stable version
- 0.12
- Platforms
- Windows, macOS, Linux, BSD, Android (Termux)
- Windows minimum
- Windows 8+
- Install methods
- Download, package manager, source build
- Configuration language
- Lua (built-in)
- Vimscript
- Supported (Vimscript v1)
- Plugin compatibility
- Vim 8.x plugins
- Language server support
- LSP (built-in)
- License
- Apache 2.0 (parts under Vim license)
- Official FAQ gives 0.12 as the current stable release; a latest development prerelease is also published.
- The maker describes Neovim as fully compatible with Vim's editing model and Vimscript v1.
- Source code is hosted on GitHub; the license entry comes from the GitHub repository, not the maker's website.
Sources: Neovim home page (official) · Neovim install documentation (official) · neovim/neovim GitHub repository
Checked 2026-11-03
- Candidate 4
GNU Emacs
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GNU Emacs
- Type
- Extensible text editor
- Core
- Emacs Lisp interpreter
- License
- Free/libre software
- Current version
- Emacs 31.1 (released 2026-08-24)
- Earlier major release
- Emacs 30.1 (released 2025-02-23)
- Platforms
- GNU/Linux, BSDs, Haiku, macOS, MS Windows, Android, Solaris, MS-DOS/FreeDOS
- Editing modes
- Syntax coloring for many file types
- Unicode
- Nearly all human scripts
- Built-in help
- Documentation and tutorial
- The official release history lists Emacs 31.1 as released 2026-08-24; the cached home page text still showed Emacs…
- The official download page lists macOS and MS Windows builds, with Homebrew and MSYS2 as install routes.
- The official home page states Emacs was ported to Android in the 30.1 release.
Sources: GNU Emacs - GNU Project (home page) (official) · GNU Emacs Release History (official) · GNU Emacs download - GNU Project (official)
Checked 2026-11-03
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