14 years ago I ditched Emacs as my main text editor and switched to Vim. I felt Emacs was too bloated and slow, I tried Vim for a few days and never looked back once I got comfortable with it.

Vim is still fast today, but after 14 years of use I’ve come to dislike its limitation and weird quirks. It does too much now, and it isn’t as ‘elegant’ as I wish it was.

I tried the Acme editor, and I loved the ideas behind it, but it wasn’t suited to my keyboard-focused workflow. I switched back to Vim after a single day of use, but the experience made me crave something better.

I also tried Neovim on and off over the past year, but I didn’t see the point of switching to a fork of an editor I’ve come to dislike.

After reading good things about it online, I started using the Kakoune text editor, and I’m impressed by its design and trade-offs thus far. I’m still getting used to Kakoune’s new edition and navigation style, and yet I already feel productive. After just a day using it I think it may be the one. Expect more posts about Kakoune in the near future.