What the future lies for Vim?

So at this rate of vim development, what do you think the future of vim looks like?

I think it is going to fall so far behind Neovim as to be a tool used primilary for compability and safety -- a "safe default" with far better portability.

There have been many converts to Neovim already; my question is, is the future of Vim good in your eyes?

I think that Vim will entirely collapse when Bram decides for one reason or another stops maintaining it -- it is Bram & community, not a community project. Neovim (a far more community driven project) will then gain a bunch MORE momentum.

Would the community end up splitting?

That is going to happen no matter what, Neovim is going to add stuff that is far from backward compatible.

How is this going to affect Vim and plugin development?

Going to be a huge problem for vim, already things like Floobits have gotten a far better experience via Neovim (https://news.floobits.com/2014/11/04/neovim/) and that is going to continue. Libtermkey (http://www.leonerd.org.uk/code/libtermkey/) support will only continue to seperate Neovim as a compatible but better Vim. Plugins are going to be the primary driver of people from Vim to Neovim ... they want to use some neat plugin for LangX but it says "only works in Neovim" or "Neovim recommended"... people will install Neovim, copy .vimrc to .nvimrc and just go on with life, never looking back at vim -- because why would they?

Are you switching to Neovim or have you switched already?

I use both concurrently, Neovim is a bit cutting edge and I can't be broken, vim is my daily driver. But, I suspect sooner rather than later, Neovim will replace vim for me -- not sure exactly when, it will probably be some neat plugin I want to run. :)

Do you think Vim can still benefit from Neovim and refactor/fix some of its code?

No. The differences are getting to the point where any signifigant updates will not be portable, obviously bug fixes and other stuff if simple will port fairly easily.

/r/vim Thread