I’ve been always obsessed with efficiency and getting things done faster. Right about when I was getting started with coding in my 2nd semester I discovered Vim. Ever since then, I knew, in spite of the steep learning curve, I had to learn it to make my coding experience more efficient. I’ve been a loyal Vim user for about 8 months, in which I switched to Neovim and customized it with plugins and scripts to my liking and I was pretty satisfied with my editor.
Why Neovim
The added benefit was that I looked cool while coding or doing anything text-based, which made me feel like a hacker. It also unlocked new horizons for me and changed the way I use my computer. I started relying more on the terminal and it got to a point of obsession to such an extent that I even switched from Google Tasks to Task warrior, a terminal task manager. Everything from the terminal became my philosophy.
Why VScode
Everything was good until I got my first part-time job in my 4th semester. My mentors at the job were insisting on me using VScode as they couldn’t help me with simple problems like Git branching & other editor-specific features like going to definition, and global searches. Sure I can do everything from my Neovim setup but it was vastly different from what they were used to and I understood how they couldn’t help me.
So after a lot of conviction, I decided to switch to VScode. Started learning all the shortcuts, it also has a Vim plugin for using my Vim keybindings which I got pretty good at over the months of practice. I realized it wasn’t so bad after all. I could get things done and my doubts would be resolved easily by my mentors.
Why Neovim again
But after a couple of weeks, I could experience Vscode lacking in the aspects in which Vim was just unbeatable like the file explorer plugins allowed for vim based navigation & manipulation and just the ability to customize vim to my liking was the thing that made me switch back to Neovim.
Conclusion
Don’t get me wrong, I know even VScode has a lot of customization options like custom scripts & custom shortcuts but that defeated the purpose of using VScode. So, I’m back to using Neovim & am pretty happy with it. I believe that everyone who has to deal with a lot of text should spend some time learning Vim, it will provide exponential returns over time.