kakoune is a text editor

A comprehensive deep-dive into the Kakoune text editor, covering its core design philosophy and how it differs from Vim. The key insight is Kakoune's inverted grammar: instead of Vim's verb-subject order (e.g., `dw`), Kakoune uses subject-verb, meaning there is always an active selection before any action is taken. This eliminates the need for a separate visual mode and operator-pending mode, making editing more predictable and atomic. The post covers multiple selections as a first-class feature, registers and marks for saving selection state, the server-client architecture, editing with Unix pipes, Kakscript (the built-in scripting language with unique quoting rules), command expansions, shell expansions for plugin development, and practical examples of writing plugins using hooks and custom commands.