No one can exit vim. It's simply not possible.
There are even legends that the devil himself was onced tricked into opening vim and is stuck there since.
this post was submitted on 15 Apr 2026
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That explains the many vim enthusiasts that don't want any other editor. They simply can't exit the vim instance they once accidentally opened...
The Eagles called it Hotel California.
"We are all just prisoners here of our own device"
So true, so true.
Stockholm Editor
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so human of it!
Isn't it? I can't decide whether I believe this is an easter egg
If it was trained properly on Internet data it would just respond with "you can't"
If you need to exit vim, just open a new terminal and reboot the machine.
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Ok this proves that AI has reaches human level intelligence.
This is the closest I have seen Copilot doing something like a human Programmer would
Instructions: "Next, open the .config file in vim..."
Me:
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This is how we trap it. This is how we win.
This is how we vim😏
Are you sure? It looks like this is going "Hey, I can't get the front door open to the house, so I called the cops and told them I was being held hostage so they would break down the door with a battering ram."
How long is it before CoPilot can't exit vim and just deletes vim as the solution?
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Why :wq doesnt work?
If it’s a read only file it won’t work, but it might be in insert mode and can’t escape.
It should have tried :q!
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Just like me fr
I often see Copilot get stuck in a nonresponsive shell after it used cat > file. It's hilarious to watch the first time, but I'm a bit tired of it by now. Why doesn't it just edit files like it normally does?
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Blowing through all those tokens failing to exit a vim
Same tbh
First funny thing ive seen Microslop Copilot do...
i cant understand all the vim hyping. its probably very neat and can do whatever, but what good is that if it takes awful amount of bother to learn everything by heart since interface has been designed to be as unfriendly as possible. it doesnt have to be fit for office worker, but at least some ease of use is needed.
The interface is modal editing, which, yes, takes some getting used to. The payoff is that you get a kind of programming language for text editing. Rather than memorizing ctrl+shift+alt-style keybinds, you decompose stuff into chainable actions.
Have you ever played a video game, be it with kbd+mouse or gamepad, and realize you’re doing a bunch of stuff without actually consciously thinking about what buttons you’re pressing? That’s what working in editors like Vim or (my fav) Helix feels like.
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since interface has been designed to be as unfriendly as possible
No, it hasn't.
It (well, vi, which vim is a clone of) has been designed to be a possible interface on a keyboard that doesn't have arrow keys or other modifier keys than shift. There aren't that many ways to program a visual text editor when those are your constraints.
That it's more productive once you know it is a side-effect.
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It’s a specialist tool. You can say the same thing about any specialist tool. Why should CNC machine tools exist if they’re so hard to use and take a lot of training and are dangerous in the hands of untrained people?
Reject CNC machines, return to rock!
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Vim is actually highly ergonomic; you can do everything with a minimum of keystrokes without moving a hand away to a mouse or touchpad or oven the arrow keys. If that's worth the time investment to learn it, is a highly subjective question. But I’d say it's a lot easier than many people think.
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fluency. languages are hard to learn but when you know them you communicate better. same as touch-typing, or mobas.
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Ngl, there have been some times when i Ctrl-Z, then found and killed the PID
No need to find it, just kill %1, to kill the first background job in a shell (check jobs otherwise to find the right %n)
It has achieved the same level of awareness as the average emacs user.
I'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't exit vim.
How to protect your computer from automated AI attacks 101: start vim
Come on in, <esc>J us, soon you will learn to love the one true editor. Launch vi and be <esc>:w. Soon you will want to <esc>:%s/other editors/vi/g. <esc>dd your hesitation and do it.
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If you use nvim you don't exit you open a float terminal. Why would you exit?
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