I was in a similar boat. The reality for vim is; generally, the syntax checkers and code completion plugins are hacks, honestly, go read the source code. When I

I was in a similar boat. The reality for vim is; generally, the syntax checkers and code completion plugins are hacks, honestly, go read the source code. When I did I was aghast that people were using and promoting them (specifically the java plugins). It's been a couple of years so take this with a grain of salt, imho etc. I think if one really want's to pick up vim (or emacs) you have to set aside the IDE part of your brain. For example, I still use an ide for java, but I use vanilla vim with no plugins for frontend (html, css, javascript, ember cli). There it's a text editor and that's all I need. Plain vim actually has A LOT of functionality. If one learns the vim way, they might find they don't need nearly as many plugins.