7 Reasons I Chose Neovim Over VSCode Vim You Didn't Expect (And Why You Might Not)

[@olearydj]

Rapidly becoming one of my favorite channels. Great material and production values every time. Would love to know more about your dot files approach and the macOS settings script. Keep up the great work.

[@henrymisc]

Thank you so much! That made my day! 🙏 I'm glad you're enjoying the content and thanks for the suggestion! Will definitely dive deeper into it - stay tuned :)

[@YooAzula8262]

Ein weiterer Banger in der Pipeline. Danke, Chef. Die Videos sind wirklich sehr belohnend. (:

[@henrymisc]

Danke! Freut mich riesig wenn meine arbeit "ankommt" :)

[@knortic]

Super underrated man! These are great! Keep it up :D

[@henrymisc]

Thanks a ton, will do! ✌️

[@horrorspidey7033]

I have been using vim for over 10 years now. I have been in that rabbit hole of making nvim like an IDE, or say my version of of IDE. My suggestion, use a tool which gets job done. Nvim even after bells and whistles, I still don't like it for big projects. I use vscode for biggies, and vim or vi, to quickly edit a file. There is no perfect editor or IDE guys. It's just a rabbit hole.

[@greyshopleskin2315]

Why you don’t like it for big projects? I’m curious

[@duyanho7974]

Im also curious why u dont like vim for big projects

[@stanislavmilchev3054]

cuz of skill issues guys

[@nopiece3733]

Multiple times I heard term “Personal Development Environment”, which stands for “PDE”. I believe that is exactly what we’re doing 😊

[@henrymisc]

It's actually the opposite for me! 😃 I find Neovim's navigation combined with Telescope to be super powerful, especially in large codebases. That said, I still use VSCode in certain scenarios - like when I need Jupyter notebook integration, which is pretty great. But I totally agree with you: whether it's VSCode, Neovim, Emacs, or anything else, they're all just tools to get the job done, not the end goal themselves.

[@richardbennett4365]

​@henrymisc I look forward to hearing more from you. I like your presentation style, and your voice is easy-going, comfortable to listen to. Always a joy.

[@henrymisc]

Wow, thank you! More to come :)

[@terrol3164]

Great video that actually addresses things that are not really possible in other editors!

[@henrymisc]

Glad it was helpful!

[@merks3465]

Exactly the reasons why I prefer Neovim! Great video!

[@henrymisc]

Thanks for watching! :)

[@kirillvoloshin2065]

thank you for dotfiles! yes, very good point about tinkering and potential broken configs (heard from a colleague he went through it a couple times). I installed neovim and copied the config from Josean Martinez, but haven't fully moved to neovim yet. vscode with vim mode is just about enough for now, maybe one day...

[@王越卿]

wow. that's awesome. i just start trying to switch my workflow to nvim and i do play warcraft3 either. actually i do want see some viedeos of you play warcraf3

[@FalconMasters]

1:59 when I exit out of ranger I come back the the root directory. Did you do anything special so when you quit ranger you are still on that path you navigated?

[@henrymisc]

You can achieve this by running `. ranger`.

[@FalconMasters]

​@@henrymisc You just changed my life! haha thanks!

[@avimehenwal]

wow ! I was intreagued by that myself, was about to ask that. Gladly already answered here. Very nice trick

[@richardbennett4365]

A good not-too-configured but also not-too-vanilla either is the NvChad configuration layer for Neovim. I found it a little better than AstroVim and LunarVim.

[@houstonbova3136]

Lazyvim is hands down the best out of the box default config I’ve found.

[@henrymisc]

NVChad is really nice - especially the aesthetics IMO. You might have noticed that I stole the statusbar design from it 🤫

[@drelephanttube]

Nice video, I really like your presentation style. Maybe you could talk a tiny bit slower, it's like a constant stream of words especially with the cuts between sentences. But I also don't like timewasting youtubers. Anyway thanks a lot and I agree with you about neovim, been using it for 2 weeks now and loving it except for when I get stuck on how to change some particular setting.

[@henrymisc]

Thank you for the feedback; I really appreciate it. I've received similar comments a few times. I'll definitely try to work on slowing down my pace a bit next time and allowing for more natural pauses. It might even make the editing easier for me as well! :)

[@Ytuserqf]

Idk about this. Vim appealed to me as I value keyboard time a lot and practically live on the terminal anyway. In my experience though, the amount of time needed to keep fixing broken dependencies, adding manually support for each tech you use and the overall maintenance is just too much. At work I don’t have this luxury, and in my free time I prefer to actually code than to infinitely tinkering with my setups. I use vim a lot for editing configs and other quick edits, sure, but for dev I’m happy with what’s available with vscode atm. Sure, it’s a bloated piece of sw, but requires minimal maintenance and after learning the minimal keybinds you can work keyboard only on it as well. Another W for vscode is the out of the box ssh experience. As someone editing code from other machines as a primary means of dev, this is a nice QoL. In hindsight, I was tolerating a lot of the drawbacks of vim use, just because it was cool! So, I think it’s important to be honest here as well

[@80sixd]

opening ranger to cd into a directory 100% feels inefficient.

[@henrymisc]

Yeah, it's overkill for the example :D I would usually do it when I don't know the exact location.

[@Giuseppecarusoplus]

@@henrymisc you don't have to be always super productive.😊 Sometimes you want a more visual way to look for things, don’t you? 😉 Speaking about, I switched to Yazi lastly.

[@mr.sloth.]

@@henrymisc try zoxide, it knows for you

[@viveknidhi]

Awesome terminal setup

[@vincentchan7397]

Nice video. BTW, like your tmux status bar which from the video you mentioned you made it yourself but couldn't find it in your dotfiles. Are you able to share it? Thanks.

[@henrymisc]

It should be there. Check this file `tmux/nord-theme.conf` :)

[@vincentchan7397]

@@henrymisc Found it and got it installed. Very nice. Love it. Thanks.

[@Nitiiii11]

For a better out-of-the box experience, consider Helix. I still prefer Neovim, but Helix would be my second choice, and might be my first choice in a couple of years once it has plugins.

[@henrymisc]

Just checked out the demo and I must say it looks pretty good! Where's the catch?

[@Nitiiii11]

​@@henrymisc Helix is quite opinionated compared to Neovim. I only have a few minor points here and there, on the LSP client, the missing git integration, and the integrated fuzzy finder for example. It uses kakoune-motions (which I don't really want to learn, but some argue are superior to vim-motions), but can be configured to be 95% like vim motions. For me all of this is enough so that I will keep using Neovim, for now anyway. Having said that, I think Helix is awesome and on its way to become an even better editor.

[@henrymisc]

@@Nitiiii11 I see thanks for sharing. With this in mind I think I'd also still prefer nvim for now. But will definitely keep an eye on Helix. Seems like a promising project!

[@avimehenwal]

Which are you using for neovim ? Looks nice

[@henrymisc]

Which font? JetBrains Mono :)

[@谢智斌-q9l]

The cdo example is just a simple replace which vscode can do quite well, That's say I want to comment all those grep lines, I can "cdo norm gcc" which is impossible in any IDE.

[@badral-balushi5911]

Neovim is like a puzzle cube, you'll enjoy configuring it the more your programming skills improve and knowledge increase.

[@henrymisc]

Absolutely! 💯

[@joeljededemekong5628]

what utility or tool did you use to run jupyter that made it launch in the browser? it was “poetry run..”

[@henrymisc]

I'm using JupyterLab, and by default, it should automatically launch in your browser. The reason I prefix the command with "poetry run" (e.g. "poetry run jupyter lab") is because I manage my project's virtual environment with Poetry. This ensures that Jupyter runs within that environment, giving me access to all the libraries I've installed. Does that help clarify things?

[@joeljededemekong5628]

@@henrymisc thank you very much

[@portusdelphini]

All those small operations in nvin do not replace huge IDE code helpers, analyzers etc. It's ok for something small algorithmic when all your need is 10 files in a row.

[@henrymisc]

Do you have an example? What are you missing in nvim that you can do in a regular IDE?

[@chriscastillo8068]

Man I had the same experience going online with a RTS game for the first time. 😂

[@richardbennett4365]

I have like Jupyter Lab for some time, but Marimo is said to be pretty good and the plus is that there's no funky *.ipynb format, just plain python. I'm trying it out. Marimo seems all right.

[@henrymisc]

Thanks for sharing! I wanted to give it a try, but it seemed to rely on so many dependencies and my notebooks need to be sharable with people who don't use neovim.

[@houstonbova3136]

Reasons 1 and 6. I don’t use ranger and just use zoxide. Messing around with nix and direnv lately too. I found that all the other reasons I can get “close enough” in VSCode. But 1 is literally impossible to replicate and 6 there is similar tools but they’re all garbage compared to telescope.

[@fo1h3m45]

What's the terminal color theme?

[@henrymisc]

It's Nord

[@roccociccone597]

One thing. VS Code is not an IDE. It's an editor written in JS running inside of electron

[@armanrozika]

with all extensions and plugins, it can easily be an iDE, btw

[@archbtwlevel]

I get stuck while configuring plugins and how to solve it ???😢

[@keaneplayingmbae2852]

I made a rule where I configure exclusively on my rest day(Sunday). First I back up my config using snapshots then if I am unsatisfied and the end of Sunday or I can't daily drive my new setup I switch to the snapshot of my older config.

[@gabrielkolletalves493]

If ur lost, start again from scratch and try a different approach.

[@mizu_7422]

Have you tried lazy? it is super easy to use

[@wojciech-kulik]

Ok, you are ready, it's time to try Nix :D.

[@henrymisc]

I'm still afraid of the rabbit hole 🙈

[@mylesmontclair]

FYI - the link to your tmux plugin is broken. Also, great plugin so thank you for sharing it! I am using it for my tmux config :)

[@henrymisc]

Glad you like the plugin! 🙏 And thanks for catching the broken link - fixed it now :)

[@iuliancovaliuc9816]

What is the Terminal you use ?

[@henrymisc]

It's Wezterm

[@iuliancovaliuc9816]

@@henrymisc Really enjoying your Neovim setups, feels like I finally found out "the thin" for me, that terminal emulator also looks sick ! Thanks and keep up the good videos

[@umka7536]

I can compare my speed of working with the code (IaC: Terraform, Python, etc.) and my colleagues who use VSCode or JetBrains. I am definitely faster, much faster.

[@nickmills8476]

Cheers to all the lumberjacks among us!

[@mkwpaul]

Everytime I see someone using vim with a file tree side panel and "file-tabs" at the top I get somewhat thrown off. I don't wanna imply that its the wrong way to use vim or anything like that, do whatever works for you, but I don't understand why someone would want it. Having to regularly close dozens of tabs I navigated through that stayed open in IDEs was one of the final pushes that made me switch to using nvim full-time. That shit was annoying af. There are multiple plugins to help you switch between buffers in nvim, I use harpoon and I couldn't be happier. I get wanting a file tree occasionally, especially if you're working in a large code base that you aren't deeply familiar with,. Its like a minimap and gives some surrounding context. But 98% of the time it just wastes screenspace. I'd much rather use that for a second vertical split with another file buffer.

[@henrymisc]

I totally get where you're coming from! I actually use a mix: bufferline for

[@schmooser]

I switched from like this setup vim to Emacs around 5 years and never regretted it - all these different tools are in Emacs and are much better integrated and written in the same language - Emacs Lisp - that you can really write to extend the editor yourself. Tmux , fzf, vim, telescope, ranger, lua - the integration level is nowhere as in Emacs between Vertico, Dired, Magit, Consult and Org Mode.

[@p99chan99]

Emacs ftw

[@henrymisc]

I wanna give it at try some point honestly. Maybe I'll make a video about it then :)

[@aquepaique]

neovim has 10x bigger community.

[@pktr2320]

Nice video, but someone really having work to get done, does not spend time with this kind of things. Assuming you have an employer, he would fire you if he saw that you spend time for this kind of things. Finally if you were a ML engineer, there are so many projects you could be working for, that you wouldn't even have 5 minutes to spend on configuring nvim and similar bullshit. Better be honest and openly admit that you are a wanna be youtuber.

[@henrymisc]

@@pktr2320 In my experience, investing into your workflow easily pays off tenfold, plus it's fun and makes the work so much more enjoyable. But that's just my take-if vanilla VSC suits your needs best, go with what works for you!

[@j.r.r.tolkien8724]

Neovim sucks. I use Kakoune. Vim motions are terrible. If you don't see how trerrible an non-sensical they are use Kakoune.

[@stefanalecu9532]

You would've been the kind of guy to go to a VHS store and tell everyone how much better Betamax is. Also, you can't just leave it at that, the burden of proof is onto you to prove how "nonsensical" Vim motions are, so do it.

[@eivindsulen8516]

I like the repeatability of vim bindings. I don't think you get it as intuitively in kakoune. Also, how do you go about configuring it? I have wanted to try it for some time, but neovim has a much bigger ecosystem so it is easier to get into

[@j.r.r.tolkien8724]

@@stefanalecu9532 Gave you a practical experiment to do yourself. Can't be more empirical than that.

[@j.r.r.tolkien8724]

I used neovim for a couple of months and it became extremely slow. 😂So I went back to vscode before discovering kakoune.

[@j.r.r.tolkien8724]

For the people who use vscode I tell them to try vscodium. For the people how use vim I tell them to try kakoune.