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I usually use vim but recently i came back to vscode after an accident (didn't have time to reconf).
Now I came back to vim (normal one, not neovim, fuck that lua shit). You need the minimum amount of plugin for your workflow.
I use
* fzf (ctrl+p)
* lsp (autocomplete and syntax, autoimport and everything)
* ack -
Oh, if only saving about half a second or so due to not having to reposition my hand would make me faster. But typing speed was never the issue, what always slows me down to a crawl is having to read and think about the frrrrreaking code.
Anyway, muscle memory is a bitch. Being able to switch to a new editor and a different keyboard layout is an impressive display of your prowess, so good going. -
Vim is a text editor, not IDE. You can compare vanilla with Notepad++, but not with VSCode. For that you need plugins.
Above said, it took me months to get as proficient in Vim as in Notepad++ (which we used at school), but it was 20+ years ago, and I had to write most of what I needed — in Vimscript of all languages. There were no real plugins, no plugin managers, no language servers. All we had was `ctags` and imagination. It's way better now.
Here's a veteran-made newbie-friendly config that gets Neovim close to VSCode: https://github.com/nvim-lua/...
The same vet explaining most of it in 30m: https://youtube.com/watch/...
Use the above, and don't try to learn vanilla. You'll end up triggering completion with ctrl+x ctrl+o and accepting it with ctrl+y, like I do. It's good when you want to scold plugin devs for breaking default keymaps, but not much else. If saving bothers you, this maps it to ctrl+s in INSERT mode:
:imap <c-s> <esc>:w!<cr>i
Update on my 60% keyboard and (neo)vim journey:
I've been getting much more used to the motions and hand posture required to use vim, but I still don't understand people who use it as their main editor.
I'm still using vanilla nvim, because:
- I am afraid of learning to install plugins
- I want to master the baseline experience before adding more
I enjoy the snappiness, and I feel my keyboard skills further improving, but everything about neovim is disappointing me from the syntax highlighting to the clunky copy/paste to the difficulty of finding code you need.
In VSCode, I can just do ctrl + p to go to any file, f2 to symbol rename, ctrl + shift+ f to do a recursive directory search. These are things offered only by plugins in nvim, but are available out-of-the-box in vscode.
Even saving your file is clunky. I've gotten used to esc + :w, but it's just more keystrokes than ctrl + s.
Sure, my hand is RIGHT in the middle of the keyboard, and key for key, I'm probably writing code faster when I'm in a groove. But there are so many things that are easy in vscode that are difficult in vim that I know that I'm losing time anyways.
rant