So I started using neovim, and why it isn't for me

So I started using Neovim--

So recently, I started getting into Neovim after being convinced by some people, watching more of "theprimeagen" and seeing how cool it could be. I still vividly remember that one time I saw a co-worker navigate through scripts with only his keyboard and thought to myself -- "wow if only I could do that".

My relationship with Vim has been, more or less to say, hot & cold. I started using vim back in 2018 on my first job. Installing Nerdtree, learning the hjkl commands, learning the different shortcuts that could be done in vim. However, quickly I realized that my productivity with Vim went down way too much to be useful so I went back to VSCode shortly after. Ever since then, I'd use vim only to quickly edit files in the terminal, but never as my main editor.

Fast forward to today, I decided to give vim another try. This time, with Neovim. I went fully into the Neovim universe -- installing lazy, plugins, themes, LSP, you name it. And after a couple of weeks, I still went back to vscode. 

Lazy - the plugins manager I use


But I still went back to VSCode


Here are my reasons why I think VSCode is so much better as a general purpose developer tool than Neovim, and that we shouldn't try to make Neovim something it isn't. If you'd like to check out my Neovim setup, you can clone my scripts repo and just run the installer on Github. The theme and the editor looks something like this:
A screenshot of my neovim editor

However, quickly I ran into a few issues. 

Navigating the file-tree

First, is that most of the time, I'm not actually writing code or typing away. I'm navigating throough the file tree, looking for files, looking for text. Although fzf and telescope in neovim is great for doing such tasks, I feel that since I'm switching between my browser and my editor a bunch, I'd like to just keep using my mouse as normal.

Plugins support

I have a bunch of plugins that I use on a daily basis -- some that I created myself. These plugins would have to be ported over to Lua, developed, and maintained. The overhead of doing something like that simply so that I can use Neovim in the terminal isn't worth it. Furthermore, I edit markdown files a lot for my job and I really dig the preview feature that VSCode has. 

General Support

While being full 1337 is great, I don't want to spend so much time wrangling with my editor. Sometimes, plugins break and I have to chase why and fix them. Sometimes, plugins are incompatible and I need to fix them. Having a near-IDE like solution that just "works" is good enough for me.

Closing remarks

Now while I made some points that have made me switch back to VSCode, I'm not fully back either. I have now fully embraced navigating files using Vim motions, using registers and buffers to copy/paste and navigate files. It now feels like I have the best of both worlds! Granted, I don't get that fancy telescope / fzf-lua floating window UI anymore, but at least vscode has a pretty good finder tool anyways!


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