On GameFromScratch we have covered dozens of programming tools, but today we are looking at the offspring of one of the oldest software applications still in daily use, Neovim. The great grand parent of Neovim is VI, a console based bare bones (compared to EMACS at least) text editor that first started development back in 1976 and is included with many Linux installations to this very day. VI has had such an impact on the programming world that VI compatibility mode is commonly included in most modern code editors to this very day.
VI however is mostly a product of a different era, with different computing restraints and has since been mostly supplemented in use by VIM, or VI Improved. VIM added fancy new fangled features like… mouse support and improved scripting to VI. VIM is included in almost every single Linux distro and even MacOS by default, in fact the VI command on Mac will simply redirect to VIM. VIM is very much used to this very day, in fact VIM 9 was just recently released.
VIM, like VI before it, has spawn successors as well, with the most popular of which being Neovim. Neovim is backward compatible with VIM and VIM extensions, but adds additional features such as async extension support, LUA scripting, a built in terminal emulator and more. Neovim has also been designed to be extended/embedded in other systems, meaning their are several Neovim derived editors available as well.
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You can learn more about VI, VIM, Neovim and see Vimr (Neovim Mac GUI written in Swift) in action in the video below.