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Mileage varies, even the most ardent vim user I know gave up and switched to VS Code this year. It's just too much to try to keep up with when projects and te

Mileage varies, even the most ardent vim user I know gave up and switched to VS Code this year. It's just too much to try to keep up with when projects and technologies change. I've programmed in C++, Go, Python, Java, and Angular just in the last year. I can believe that there's vim plugins to handle all those, but the energy it would take to find auto-complete and navigation and formatting and debugging and any number of other out-of-the-box IDE functionality is more than I'd like to thing about. Then there's the associated tools - Kubernetes yamls, swagger, markup, Makefiles. In IDEs they are only one plugin download away. I love vim, I used it exclusively for years when I was doing C/C++. I still ssh into servers a lot and use it pretty much daily. Still, I'm far to lazy to try to turn it into my full time development environment .

bheadmaster 3y ago
> I can believe that there's vim plugins to handle all those, but the energy it would take to find auto-complete and navigation and formatting and debugging and any number of other out-of-the-box IDE functionality is more than I'd like to thing about. Well, I'll be the bearer of the good news, then! NeoVim has a native LSP client which unifies all auto-complete/navigation/formatting into a single plugin, only requiring you to install per-language LSP server. As for debugging, there's also DSP (Debug Server Protocol) which NeoVim doesn't have native support for, but there's a plugin for that.
- ParetoOptimal 3y ago
  Emacs also has LSP support built-in with eglot and a good start for treesitter support.
- josephg 3y ago
  There’s more to language support than LSP. I use vscode and IntelliJ these days. In rust, IntelliJ lets me rename functions and variables across my entire project. Or select a few lines of code and extract them into their own function. It’ll even figure out what arguments the function needs and call it correctly. I’m writing a paper at the moment using vscode and typst (a modern latex replacement). The vscode plugin shows me the resulting rendered pdf live as I type. I can click anywhere I want to edit in the pdf and the editing window will scroll to the corresponding source text. Maybe there’s ways to do all this stuff in vim but I never found it. I used vim on and off for 20 years and I barely feel any more productive in it than when I was 6 months in. As far as I can tell, IntelliJ is both easier to learn and more powerful. Making nontrivial software in vim just doesn’t feel productive. LSP is the tip of a big iceberg of features.
  - christophilus 3y ago
    The rename across the project scenario is a LSP feature that Neovim supports. I use it frequently. I do miss the ability to trivially extract a function. I used to do that all the time in Visual Studio back in my C# days.
    - josephg 3y ago
      Yeah; and there's so many little features like that - most of which I use rarely, but they're still useful. Aside from rename, there are: - Change function arguments. (Eg, reorder the arguments of a function and update all callers) - Add a new function argument. Eg, if I change a call from foo() to foo(some_int), the suggested actions include adding a new parameter to foo with some_int's type. - Contextually fill in trait, struct, or match statements - Move a bunch of stuff to a new / different file - Organize imports - Run a test. Anything function with #[test] and no arguments can be run or debugged instantly with the click of the mouse. - Up and down buttons for trait implementations. See the definition for a trait method, or jump to one of its implementations. I have no idea how to do any of this stuff in vim. Maybe its possible with enough macros and scripts and mucking about. I really do admire vim's tenacity, but seriously. The time spent learning a modern IDE pays dividends in weeks and our careers are measured in decades.

bheadmaster 3y ago

> I can believe that there's vim plugins to handle all those, but the energy it would take to find auto-complete and navigation and formatting and debugging and any number of other out-of-the-box IDE functionality is more than I'd like to thing about. Well, I'll be the bearer of the good news, then! NeoVim has a native LSP client which unifies all auto-complete/navigation/formatting into a single plugin, only requiring you to install per-language LSP server. As for debugging, there's also DSP (Debug Server Protocol) which NeoVim doesn't have native support for, but there's a plugin for that.

ParetoOptimal 3y ago
Emacs also has LSP support built-in with eglot and a good start for treesitter support.
josephg 3y ago
There’s more to language support than LSP. I use vscode and IntelliJ these days. In rust, IntelliJ lets me rename functions and variables across my entire project. Or select a few lines of code and extract them into their own function. It’ll even figure out what arguments the function needs and call it correctly. I’m writing a paper at the moment using vscode and typst (a modern latex replacement). The vscode plugin shows me the resulting rendered pdf live as I type. I can click anywhere I want to edit in the pdf and the editing window will scroll to the corresponding source text. Maybe there’s ways to do all this stuff in vim but I never found it. I used vim on and off for 20 years and I barely feel any more productive in it than when I was 6 months in. As far as I can tell, IntelliJ is both easier to learn and more powerful. Making nontrivial software in vim just doesn’t feel productive. LSP is the tip of a big iceberg of features.
- christophilus 3y ago
  The rename across the project scenario is a LSP feature that Neovim supports. I use it frequently. I do miss the ability to trivially extract a function. I used to do that all the time in Visual Studio back in my C# days.
  - josephg 3y ago
    Yeah; and there's so many little features like that - most of which I use rarely, but they're still useful. Aside from rename, there are: - Change function arguments. (Eg, reorder the arguments of a function and update all callers) - Add a new function argument. Eg, if I change a call from foo() to foo(some_int), the suggested actions include adding a new parameter to foo with some_int's type. - Contextually fill in trait, struct, or match statements - Move a bunch of stuff to a new / different file - Organize imports - Run a test. Anything function with #[test] and no arguments can be run or debugged instantly with the click of the mouse. - Up and down buttons for trait implementations. See the definition for a trait method, or jump to one of its implementations. I have no idea how to do any of this stuff in vim. Maybe its possible with enough macros and scripts and mucking about. I really do admire vim's tenacity, but seriously. The time spent learning a modern IDE pays dividends in weeks and our careers are measured in decades.