vim has evolved from vi to provide significantly more functionality and customization than vi, making it comparable to Emacs. Vi is a smaller and faster program, but with less capacity for customization. Emacs client startup time is practically instantaneous as all it does is invoke the existing Emacs process to redraw the display. Various instances of Emacs can then be started in client mode, attaching to this server and sharing state. Emacs 18 (released in 1987) introduced a server mode designed to run continuously in the background. However, it is highly customizable and includes a large number of features, as it is essentially an execution environment for a Lisp program designed for text-editing. This makes Emacs take longer to start up (even compared to vim) and require more memory. This creates a path in the decision tree which unambiguously identifies any command.Įmacs executes many actions on startup, many of which may execute arbitrary user code. Vi retains each permutation of typed keys. This still forms a decision tree of commands, but not one of individual keystrokes. Traditionally, Emacs commands are key combinations for which modifier keys are held down while other keys are pressed a command gets executed once completely typed. The most important historical differences between vi and Emacs are presented in the following table:

Getting macvim