Neovim and VSCode

I used VSCode since roughly 2017. It was a far cry from the traditional "IDE" I was used to before, and I found it really nice. Mainly I liked its ability to use multiline and multicursor far better than any editor I had used before it. It was also "fast".

But... I wanted to move away

Why not VSCode?

After years of using VSCode, I started to get annoyed with it. I only really had three key complaints (see my article about vim motions if you want to see why they weren't problems for me).

• It was slow to startup (especially with a lot of plugins)
• I worked on a remote machine, and doing that with VSCode SSH (while great), was even slower to startup because you had to open VSCode first, then connect, then it reopens itself.
• Managing files is a pain. There's no good way to "create file at path".

Why Neovim?

I had heard about Neovim, and I had heard that it was fast, and I had heard that it was good for remote development. Sounds perfect! So I gave it a go.

I knew what I was getting in to, so I didn't make it a week long escapade (a common mistake). I used Neovim for 2 or so months. I used it for work, I used it for personal projects, I used it for everything. Hours a day. I read the usr_txt## docs, I got relatively proficient with using visual mode, macros, text objects, and many of the other things that make vim great.

I really did enjoy the experience and I had a lot of fun with it. I even wrote a plugin for it (which I still use to this day). Here's a non exhaustive list of what I really liked about it.

• oil.nvim. If you take anything away from this post, take a look at that plugin. It's a game changer. I could create files and folders, manage them, and all with the very vim motions that I liked.
• Leader key. You can do very complicated things with a single melody of keypresses.
• Text objects. I like being able to select certain portions of text quickly. It's something I miss greatly.
• /textIwantToFind. I like being able to search for text and jump to it quickly. I know what I'm looking for much of the time, and I don't want to have to use my mouse to find it.

I'm still using Neovim for all non project file editing. It's really nice for just editing text.

Great mood booster when I chuckle at it opening in the VSCode integrated terminal.

What went wrong?

Ultimately, the Neovim / terminal focused workflow just isn't for me.

It might be for you and it definitely isn't for everyone (so don't shove it down their throats). Editing multiple files at once (think: refactor)? Cumbersome. Comparing those two files? Clunky. Use a terminal command to solve x thing that Neovim can't do? Annoying.

Sure, a lot of these problems can be solved with a lot of keypresses / knowledge like "well ackshually just open all the files into a quickfix list and use macros to edit them all" (since, obviously, every change can be done by a macro and definitely requires no thought). But that's damn overhead!

Let me focus on what I actually want to do: get code written.

Overhead overhead overhead everywhere I damn looked.

I honestly don't understand people who think that Neovim let's them "focus on code" when anytime you want do something than literally write characters (maybe something only I do) it's now time to think.

Oh and multicursor. So many people say that Neovim has it better with either find and replaces, global commands, or macros. But boy oh boy is it a damn pain to do even the most simple "I want to replace these two selections".

To be clear, things like text objects improve the overhead, but again, not talking about strictly text editing here.

Why move back to VSCode?

If you couldn't tell, I stopped using Neovim. I moved back to VSCode for project level editing.

A foreword: You'll notice a lot of these are "I want to use the mouse". It's not that, it's just faster a lot of the time, and that's something people should appreciate more.

1. Being able to scroll around, and not lose where my cursor is.

This is actually the biggest thing for me. I often times need to check context of something, and I don't want to have to think about it. I know that I can use marks (how to jump to parts of a file you've saved in vim), but I don't want to have to think about it, it's just more overhead.

2. Having new files open in tabs.

One word: overhead. I don't want to have to think about where I'm going to open a file, I just want it to open in a tab. Managing tabs is also pretty easy. Just close them all anytime it's cluttered.

3. Builtin git solution

I don't like most git solutions, but I like VSCode's. It tells me what files are staged, which are not, and their changes in a nice view. Everything else like merging I'd rather do with the CLI (but still, all the changes + readding stuff shows in VSCode)

I tried many from fugitive, gitui, and lazygit. None of them gave me the things I wanted, easily, and nothing more.

4. A file tree is actually pretty nice

I can always enter zen mode if I wanna hide all the garbage, or, just minimize it. It's nice to have different parts of the codebase visible to go to at once.

5. Multicursor

Being able to do ctrl/cmd+d in vscode to change something like all the tailwind classes in a file is really nice. Also, having things that aren't in the same place, or have the same pattern, have the same modification, is really quick too.

A note: checkout "Multiple cursor case preserve" if you haven't.

It is less overhead, and less keypresses. I know it's less powerful than a macro, but it's less thinking, and how often are those features really faster / needed?

6. A lot of the CLI improvements carry over

I can still use ripgrep and fd and fzf and gitui and lazygit and the list goes on. Just pipe most of that into code -r and you're good to go. Switch windows to the terminal and do that. It's fine. Really.

7. Extensions.

I don't want to have to keep reconfigurating my editor every time something updates.

• Null-ls going offline, with no great replacement that I've seen, is not ideal
• Having to read change logs just to upgrade stuff, is not ideal

8. Global search and replace

Either I get Neovim's basically nonexistant "easy" way to do it, or I deal with a CLI app that is no longer my editor (and is therefore missing text modification ability)

9. SSH?

You might be confused and wonder why this is a reason to switch back. Wasn't it a reason to switch away?

But here's the thing: SSH tunneling of my ports to my remote machine was so tedious, that I started developing locally on my machines for projects I was able to to save myself the headache.

This was true for Neovim too.

So I just stopped! And that problem went away. But, being able to tunnel to a SSH connection and have the ports passthrough on the offchance I end up doing it is far more valuable than startup time.

What can anyone learn from this?

Try new things!

I'm glad I tried Neovim. I learned a lot about how I like to work, and I learned a lot about how I don't like to work. I also learned a lot about how I can make my workflow better in VSCode. Spending half the time configuring VSCode as I did Neovim, I was able to get a lot of the same benefits.

Don't jump to Neovim because you think it's going to make you a better programmer.

It won't. It's just a tool. It's a tool that you can use to make yourself more productive (no guarantee).

It's a tool that's good for text editing, not necessarily as an IDE.

Ultimately, know your tools.

If I had spent the same time configuring VSCode as I was forced to for Neovim, I probably would have been able to get it even more productive.