Why hackers moved from Neovim to Emacs
1 hacker described this switch in public comments. Their words, with links to the originals.
What hackers said about the move
“since one month i’ve switched over to emacs, running doom”tacker2000, 2025-12-27original comment ↗
Use Neovim? Get alerted when hackers criticize it.
Tell us the tools in your stack. When hackers start criticizing one of them, or moving to an alternative, you will hear about it first.
Neovim vs Emacs
| Neovim | Emacs | |
|---|---|---|
| Hackers who recommend | 10 | 8 |
| Hackers who criticize | 2 | 1 |
| Moved away from it | 3 | 1 |
| Moved to it | 10 | 4 |
Counts are distinct hackers in the sampled comments, not market share.
Criticism of Neovim
“But then instead of ctrl+z backgrounding it, I'll accidentally quit vim.”kelnos, 2026-09-27original comment ↗
“I switched from neovim because plugins and updates kept breaking it, and I never really did feel like I was in control of it anyway.”debois, 2026-03-07original comment ↗
Praise for Emacs
“Same here! Aside from the basic unix tools in /[usr]/bin/, there is very little software with the longevity of emacs.”jjav, 2026-10-29original comment ↗
“I switched from vi readline mode to emacs recently primarily for Ctrl-r and Alt-. (insert the argument from the last command). I love how interactive they feel.”meken, 2026-09-16original comment ↗
“I recently switched from full IDE to Emacs”KallDrexx, 2026-08-27original comment ↗
“My "stack" is all open-source: from Linux to Emacs to what-have-you.”TacticalCoder, 2026-05-04original comment ↗
“I switched from IntelliJ to emacs for this reason and it’s been great”ATMLOTTOBEER, 2026-03-26original comment ↗
Other moves from Neovim
- Neovim → Helix (1)
- Neovim → VS Code (1)