- Vim is free and has a vibrant community This code editor is open source and is available for free. It also has website and scripts updated constantly by an active community that is backing this project - Highly Customizable There are scripts that you can find to do just anything and all of these are available for free. There are scripts to give a folder structure, git plugins and a lot more - Heavily Portable All you have to do is to copy the configuration file .vimrc and paste the same into another system that you want to use with the same vim configuration and you are good to go.

It's just the best text editor you can use as a programmer on an Unix-Environment. If you have any Unix-Based system, then you have access to the console, and consequently to vim. Vim gives you the power, yet the freedom to code on any programming language you want with auto-completetion(with plugins), and much, much more! Besides, once you have practiced a lot with it, and installed all the plugins you need, you'll work lighting fast. Even without a graphical user interface, you'll work very fast.

Vim is lightweight and very efficient if you know all the tricks. Some of the most efficient power users and programmers I've known prefer Vim. It's also pretty much guaranteed that any version of Linux you come in contact with will at least have Vi installed. This is especially useful on headless systems where graphical text editors aren't really an option.