Altova XMLSpy vs. Vim

Altova XMLSpy is an excellent tool for creating/designing new XML schemas (XSDs) using a visual layout tool and helps developers and architects work with XML and JSON documents, understand and validate and diagnose issues with XML and JSON documents. It is not well suited for working with other data formats, such as YAML or CSV.

Incentivized

If you're doing any sort of text editing, you should consider Vim--once you climb the learning curve, you'll be faster and more efficient at everything you do. Also, Vim is my default search/replace tool--whenever I need to make changes throughout a document, most often, I'll copy and paste into a Vim window so that I can take advantage of regexp-based replacements. Vim isn't for the faint of heart, though--it's hard to learn and super complex. If you use a text editor once or twice a month, or just need a simple way to strip out formatting, Notepad will get you where you want to go without all the confusion.

Incentivized

• XML schema (XSD) design and maintenance
• XML document validation
• XML and JSON document reformatting and pretty-printing

Incentivized

• The efficient modal editing makes it very fast to write/edit code as I think of it.
• The customization and wide range of plugins let me do very specific things and automate parts of my workflow.
• The fact that it runs inside a terminal simplifies my window management and just becomes another Tmux window in my workflow.

Incentivized

• Application performance could be improved, especially initial load speed
• Better support for large document handling (documents hundreds or thousands of megabytes in size)
• Remove all nagging popups to upgrade

Incentivized

• Without a doubt the hardest program to learn. It is a completely different paradigm of thinking compared to other editors
• By default it doesn't have lots of fancy features you would find in larger IDE programs like code completion and linking
• It lives in the command line so a user has to be comfortable with this interface

Incentivized

I don't consider the steep learning curve to be a hinderance on the overall usability. I would rate this a ten, but to be honest a lot of people do get hung up at the beginning and just abandon it. However, for people who have made the moderate effort to get over the hump, nothing can be more usable.

Incentivized

The support is somewhat lacking; Vim doesn't really have support outside of its forums. The forums, while notably good, aren't equal to real support though, and the steep learning curve makes you wish there was a help desk that would assist with all of the basic questions. There are several handy books and guides that can be found, and most implementations of the product come with "vitutor" which walks you through its usage.

Incentivized

XMLSpy does not have many capable competitors, it is the market leader and other alternatives do not provide the tools we rely on.

Incentivized

I think it comes down to usability (and frankly, just preference). There's an old adage that Emacs is a good Operating System with a poor Text Editor! Jokes aside, when looking at different text editors, such as Emacs or Nano, Vim is the one that is usually always preferred because of how simple it is to learn. The learning curve of Vim compared to other text editors just makes it such a natural choice.

Incentivized

• XMLSpy has made us much more efficient when designing new integrations

Incentivized

• Steep learning curve means lower than average efficiency at the beginning.
• After getting familiar, it is so efficient that you will never want to use other editors.
• Good return on investment for serious editor/developers, may not be good for casual ones.

Incentivized