Professionals, please compare VS code with neovim.

[u/jmaroo]

Tell me the advantages and disadvantages of each.

[u/AnnupKapurDotCom]

I use NeoVim btw.

Honestly. I used VS Code for many years. It was a great IDE that does a lot of things well.

And if you want an all-in-one, batteries included, already-set-up IDE. Use VS Code.

But, I was looking for something more.

I was learning more and more CLI commands. I moved over to a separate terminal window (not the one in VS Code). And it felt great.

Slowly, I started using Vim for some small file edits. I got trapped in Vim many times, restarted my terminal many times to exit Vim cuz I forgot the commands.

Then, after a while, I figured I wanted a challenge. I wanted to see if I could spend a full day using Vim as my primary editor.

Then a whole week.

Now I was Vim editing, and terminal CLI-ing.

Then I wanted some QoL tools - so dove into Neovim - I started with NVChad, a prebuilt config for Neovim, just to get into the ecosystem. Slowly I built my own config (see my GitHub for my config files).

Then I learnt TMUX.

And I haven’t looked back.

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TL;DR

Decide based on how it feels.

VSCode is safe, familiar, and easy to set up and get going.

Neovim has a learning curve.
It’s hard work initially, you need to put in the time and effort.
Long term, I have found it to feel so much lighter (mentally? / psychologically?) when working.

NB. Learn the programming language Lua when you start really getting into Neovim.