Today marks the 20th anniversary of my personal favorite text editor, Vim. Ars Technica has a great article marking the occasion and talking about some Vim history in “Two decades of productivity: Vim’s 20th anniversary”
The Vim text editor was first released to the public on November 2, 1991—exactly 20 years ago today. Although it was originally designed as a vi clone for the Amiga, it was soon ported to other platforms and eventually grew to become the most popular vi-compatible text editor. It is still actively developed and widely used across several operating systems.
In this article, we will take a brief look back at the history of vi and its descendants, leading up to the creation of Vim. We will also explore some of the compelling technical features that continue to make Vim relevant today.
See also vim.org and Vim at Wikipedia.