Moving from VS Code to Neovim
It started as a curiosity. I watched The Primeagen flying through code without touching his mouse, and I was hooked. It wasn't just about speed—it was about mastery.
Why I Switched
I wanted to become better at programming, not just writing code. I felt that modern IDEs, while powerful, were a "black box." Everything is pre-packaged, abstracted away, and "magic."
I wanted a blank slate. I wanted an environment that I had to build, understand, and configure myself. I knew that forcing myself to understand my tools would push me to understand the underlying systems better.
The Learning Curve
I won't lie—the first week was painful. My muscle memory fought me every step of the way. hjkl for navigation felt alien.
But I forced myself to stick with it. I uninstalled VS Code (temporarily) to remove the safety net.
My Configuration
I'm currently running Kickstart.nvim by TJ DeVries. It's the perfect middle ground—it gives you a solid, working editor out of the box, but the configuration is small and well-commented enough that you can actually read and understand it. It's not a distribution like LazyVim that hides the details; it's a starting point for your own journey.
Key plugins I rely on:
- Telescope: For fuzzy finding files
- Harpoon: For quick file switching
- Treesitter: For better syntax highlighting
- LSP Zero: For easy LSP setup
Why stick with it?
- Speed: Once the commands clicked, editing text became faster than thinking about it.
- Remote editing: SSHing into a server and having my full editor environment is a game changer.
- Resources: Neovim uses a fraction of the RAM that VS Code does.
It's not for everyone, but for me, it's made coding fun again. It turned a chore into a craft.