yvi
2026
yvi is a minimalist command line Vi text editor written in BASIC. It is implemented in the Yabasic open source BASIC language interpreter. Created initially as a casual weekend project, it achieved some notoriety on the web, most likely because programmers LOVE Vi/Vim, and BASIC is often pejoratively considered an amateur language not for professional software projects. Or in the words of the computer scientist Edsger Dijkstra, it was considered harmful.". It's also a point of nostalgia for older programmers and computer users who came of age in the 80s with early home computers that booted into BASIC.
yvi is written in the modern dialect Yabasic, which is well-documented and relatively featureful. You can download and run the binary as a standalone program, or with Yabasic installed one can edit or run it through the interpreter.
The program is released into the public domain, on what I've learned is the 50th year anniversary of the original Vi program by Bill Joy.
The yvi program was created to be a minimal implementation. It constrains visual line editing to 80 characters wide, and contains a subset of the original Vi keys. There is no error-checking (save often!), and only a single level of undo.
Press
Vi clone written in BASIC proves old habits :wq hard, - The Register