20 years ago this day (November 2), Bram Moolenaar created Vim - an improved version of Vi text editor found in most Unix systems. Since then, Vim has flourished to become the Swiss army knife of text editors. The latest version of Vim is 7.3 which was released a little over a year ago. Vim is truly cross platform and works on Unix, Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows.
The cool features of Vim has attracted towards it a huge fan following and there are many who swear by this nifty text editor in doing their job.
If you haven't used Vim before and would like to know what makes it different then head over to Vim.org and download a copy of Vim for your OS.
Two interesting projects that help you learn the Vim basics right from within your web browser are interactive tutorial @ openvim.com and the Know vim. Also head over to Derek Wyatt's Blog and check out the Vim novice tutorial videos he has created.
There is also another project called Cream of Vim that caters to the newbies among us who are intimidated by the learning curve involved in mastering Vim.
Vim project also has a humanitarian side. It is one of the few open source projects that actively donates money to help the children in Uganda.
On the eve of Vim's 20th anniversary, Ars Technica takes a look at the history of Vim and the reasons it has flourished so much.
