5 Crucial Features Missing from Neovim: How They're Holding The Project Back

[@GavinFreeborn]

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[@driden1987]

Emacs plugin authors seem to be more aligned, whilst neovim's lua plugin ecosystem is still very green, with APIs breaking all the time and authors rewriting each other functionalities. That being said, I think the sheer amount of development in the nvim ecosystem is great and it's looking pretty good for the future.

[@jackevansevo]

100% agree with these points. I think vim/neovim have suffered a lot where plugins continuously re-invent the wheel. We end up with multiple different ways to achieve common tasks, but rarely do they utilize/extend vim in a decent way. I think an exception to this are the Tpope plugins they feel complimentary to the vim experience, not like a complete re-invention.

[@scally9341]

I think there's actually a lot of bleed over with the Linux community as well. We see time and time again things re-invented for no reason. In the attempt to make everything work super well with come great benefit, you end up missing out on other things and so every choice for something feels like a choice against like 3 other things. I just with these communities would build more on top of each other as apposed to build next to each other.

[@jackevansevo]

@@scally9341 Building the right abstractions to make software extensible and re-usable is super difficult.

[@jeffspaulding9834]

Emacs can be bad about this too, although there's been a lot of progress in the last few years. A lot of functionality from the greater Emacs community has been brought into Emacs itself - things like powerful string and sequence libraries, project management, and improvements to the completion framework. Now, instead of the big all-in-one packages you used to use for most things, you see a lot more small packages that plug into the Emacs framework and tweak the default behavior.

[@cathalogrady2331]

I have to admit I do not install vimscript plugins in general, partly because its not hip, but also because I can actually write lua comfortably and it feels good using plugins that I can delve into (since lua released I started writing small plugins, never tried prior )

[@e79905]

I couldn't replicate the powerful instropection experience that emacs/elisp gives you. It's so easy to look for documentation, change variables, read the code and extend it. e.g. What is this shortcut doing? Where is it defined? Who ovewrote the bindings? Let me just add this little advice/wrapper. Perhaps part of the credit should be given to elisp and the community's effort to document everything. It's just so weird that when I started using emacs, I knew very little, but everything is so easily accessible with a small set of commands. That was pre-lua experience though, not sure how it is today.

[@Linuxdirk]

The client/server idea could be awesome if done right. Imagine having one instance or setup on a server and then simply connect to that from whatever client or device you like and always have your complete setup available wherever you are without having to configuring anything on the clients except giving the server URL and username/password.

[@epiderpski]

I hope you take this in a positive way, I'm already happy you're making a video to help improve Neovim. I started to not listen once you said you couldn't think of something off the top. My man, you're making a video, just pause that thing and think of something.

[@GavinFreeborn]

Ya I probably should have cut that out since I give an example right after saying that 😅 assuming you mean in the client server section.

[@MENTOKz]

Thanks Gavin good video its why there is doom-emacs and spacemacs because it trys to leverage the 2 editors in to one.

[@lamprospitsillou6325]

Great video! For me i think the major reason most people, mostly emacs users , even tho they like neovim, they are put off by the somewhat limiting UI extensibility compared to emacs and other GUI editors. Other than that , even as a Neovim user of years, I don't miss anything other that the opportunities that a proper UI could bring to the table. Edit: Would you consider editing the script for this video in to a github issue so that we could all discuss it and comment on it? Small edit: Looks like the `------>` in the video desc gets turned to a line on top of your text blocking it.

[@GavinFreeborn]

Definitely, I considered talking about adding a GUI but wasn't sure how much I could add to the topic. I think Neovim's dedication to the terminal has it's pros but is kinda stuck in a middle ground with how it supports the client server functionality

[@ade5324]

I'd add there is surprisingly a lack of good neovim gui clients, considering neovim can be embedable into things. people are probably content with neovim plugin for vscode.

[@azizkavas6993]

I really appreciate your work. About omni-complete, you might find nvim-cmp helpful as a mucomplete alternative.

[@rlifts]

I agree with the command mode. Then you can add embark, oh yea fzf is already there but it displays in it's own window.

[@driden1987]

Isn't it possible to run neovim in a tmux instance and just connect to it from different terminals ? So you can share the same instance accross monitors. edit: might not be doable if you wanted to use a gui client

[@GavinFreeborn]

I've tried this in the past but it has major issues. Most notable you can only display the exact same thing on both monitors which basically defeats the purpose

[@driden1987]

@@GavinFreeborn makes sense

[@idjdbrvvskambvvv9007]

The time will eventually come when someone said neovim is not just an editor it's an lua interpreter

[@kenrod6643]

Command mode not supporting both normal and insert mode has always been a source of frustration for me.

[@GavinFreeborn]

There is always the option to hit C-f and edit it in a buffer but assuming you know that or the q: option it's definitely not to everyone's taste

[@kenrod6643]

@@GavinFreeborn C-f certainly has its uses. But it being a buffer comes with some unintended baggage. For me at least, it ended up not being worth trying to customize. Tmux somehow implements its vi-mode prompt editing as one would expect vim to, albeit supporting less motions. BTW, great content! Your video on compiling and errorformat helped change the way I build my projects.

[@GavinFreeborn]

@@kenrod6643 thanks! Happy I could share some great features with others

[@ricardor8044]

You could make a video teaching how you write you emacs config and some tips to write elisp

[@guitaripod]

Full iOS SDK and dev tools support would be nice

[@cathalogrady2331]

eyy congrats on the brilliant sponsor, great sponsor m8

[@GavinFreeborn]

Thanks! Appreciate the support

[@serenhampshire5988]

Very cool!❤️❤️❤️❤️

[@SimGunther]

Not sure if Doom Emacs = PROBLEM SOLVED! given these requirements. Maybe LISP dialects are "too awesome" for their own good.

[@adriansrfr]

Problem #1: Neovim makes for a terrible operating system

[@GavinFreeborn]

At least it has a good editor

[@samlaki4051]

Gavin doing God's work!

[@GavinFreeborn]

Nothing compared to the work the contributors put in.

[@ebn__]

Not sure I like the recent (since this video) development of this channel ;)

[@GavinFreeborn]

I swear it's pure coincidence lol. Didn't think of the implications

[@gagagero]

My main problem with Vim/Neovim is that there is no flexibility, which is where it really falls short of Emacs. You can't even toggle plugins on and off.

[@waltherstolzing9719]

Yes, you can.