Usually the default text editor I installed after re-installing Windows was Notepad++, however, I have recently become a Vim convert.

I’m sure everyone has heard of Vim, but for those who don’t know:

Vim is a highly configurable text editor built to enable efficient text editing. It is an improved version of the vi editor distributed with most UNIX systems.

I started to use Vim primarily as an affect of using Git as my preferred VCS, as msysgit ships with a version of vim and is configured to use as the default editor when you git commit, or do various other things. The more I used it the more I started to like it, so I installed it.

By default, Vim is a very productive editor. It does have a learning curve, but I don’t think it is a steep one. You should be able to get up to speed and become productive fairly quickly. Basic navigation and inserting/removing text is quite simple to get to grips with.

Once you have some basic mastery, if you are like me you will quickly want to learn how to customise Vim in order to make it even more useful.