6 ms·

Many of the Vim nerds I know, including myself, have switched over to Neovim. Only when using a remote server with a default installation do I use regular old V

Many of the Vim nerds I know, including myself, have switched over to Neovim. Only when using a remote server with a default installation do I use regular old Vim.

mmooss 2y ago
From the Stack Overflow survey: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42811182 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42811182 Vim 21.6% Neovim 12.5% I wonder what it looked like in prior years.
- joeblubaugh 2y ago
  I’m willing to believe that “vim” combines some neovim users, but I’m not surprised that the original is still more popular. Anecdotally vim seems to ship new features faster than it did 3 years ago.
  - wirrbel 2y ago
    Braam really took Neovim personally and got better at getting stuff into vim that he wouldn't merge before once neovim was arround as a competitor. I really lost track of vim in the last years because neovim is just a solid platform with an active community. But honestly at work, I think I am the only one using either a vim or emacs (I kind of use neovim and emacs but primarily neovim). In my childhood there was a TV series called "The last of his class" and it really showed old people (retirement age) doing jobs that will be gone once their retire. While some jobs truly vanished, others just transformed so drastically that they cannot be likened anymore to the job those folks did. Anyway, I feel we are watching changes in developer tooling that will be seen as the end of an era. * https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Der_Letzte_seines_Standes%3F https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Der_Letzte_seines_Standes%3F
    - mmooss 2y ago
      Why do Neovim users feel the need to take down Bram and Vim? Now you are taking credit for Bram's work! Why not make an application you love and leave everyone else alone? The community's behavior - what I see - is a deterrent to using Neovim.
      - Anthony-G 2y ago
        > Now you are taking credit for Bram's work! That’s a baseless accusation. I’ve been using Vim for about 25 years, and over the years have contributed small changes to some of the default plugins maintained by third parties (mostly language syntax and `filetype` configuration files). I have yet to even try Neovim but I too noticed that the rate of minor version releases and new features in Vim had increased after the Neovim project got off the ground.
        mmooss 2y ago
        It's not at all baseless - the basis is the parent (now GGP) comment, even if you disagree with the analysis.
      - wirrbel 2y ago
        It’s astonishing that you can arrive at this conclusion from my comment. He did great work, his development process did not scale. I am happy that I was able to use vim for more than a decade prior to neovim. The fact that after the neovim fork vims development started to pick up speed again is a fact (and doesn’t devalue bram’s work in any way). I am happy with bram’s work on vim and with the neovim devs and their work on neovim.
        mmooss 2y ago
        > his development process did not scale I hope my development projects fail like Moolenaar's! Vim has been extraordinarily successful for decades, possibly the top 5 or 10 FOSS projects ever (?). Citing Vim as an example of development process failure is really incredible.
        2y ago
gtsop 2y ago
I went back and forth quite a lot until i decided to stick to vim. The reason being that I want to gain deep knowledge of my editor instead of depending on a gazillion plugins that occasionally break. Now, I understand this is something you can do with both vim and neovim, however the documentation of neovim is littered with both the vim docs and the new lua docs, and there is a vibe of "you already know all of vim, here is the lua equivalent", which made it very inaccessible to me. I decided I'll spend the time in the more simple editor of the two and maybe reevaluate this decision again in 3-4 years
- nicoloren 2y ago
  I did the same. I mostly use Vim without plugin and a simple vimrc file. For the heavy stuff and big projects I use VSCode.
  - jackthetab 2y ago
    :s/VSCode/Jetbrains/
    - syndicatedjelly 2y ago
      Wow!
  - gtsop 2y ago
    I still use a bloated version of vim for my day job, since it involves huge react+ts apps. But i slowly build up a clean vimrc while writting my pet projects
openmarkand 2y ago
I have tried several times and I always switched back to vanilla vim. Neovim has various nice features but it requires a lot of time to migrate correctly IMHO. 20 years of habits are hard to leave, I think. Sure the configuration file is retro compatible, but some of the plugins are better suited for neovim and vice versa. I use a dozen of them and if I switch permanently to neovim I'd like to start fresh using more "modern" alternatives that make use of the newer features.
- emblaegh 2y ago
  When I migrated years ago (mostly to get access to some plugins), nvim gladly swallowed my old configuration with no changes. Then I could change to lua and other modern features at my own pace.
  - fp64 2y ago
    …I still haven’t switched to lua, all I need still works fine
  - Flimm 2y ago
    By "swallowed", I thought you meant that Neovim silently deleted your files. I'm glad the context makes it clear that it didn't.
- myaccountonhn 2y ago
  I found the neovim community to operate a bit like the node ecosystem, you pull in a plugin for every problem that solves already solved problems their own way. The plugins are also very flashy with tons of animations, colors and emojis, which to me is just distracting. That said I think people should use what they like, and I am happy that there is a big community developing an alternative to VSCode. I just didn't feel it was for me. I ended up moving to Kakoune. The community is small but the tool is so much better designed and integrates well with unix. That means that i can usually glue together whatever I need myself with 1-3 lines of config and don't need an entire plugin when I want something that isn't built-in.
  - 2y ago
bawolff 2y ago
People who describe themselves as "vim nerds" might not be representitive of the average vim user.
- mmooss 2y ago
  Maybe, but it's hard to be a vim user without being somewhat of a vim nerd. At least you have to understand a new concept of interface, several modes, and lots of keyboard shortcuts - that would make you a nerd in any other application.
  - bawolff 2y ago
    Maybe, but i use vim everyday. I have no intention of switching to neovim simply because i don't know what the difference even is. There are levels to vim usage, and you can still be very productive while only knowing the basic keyboard shortcuts.
112233 2y ago
Neovim sounded like a good idea, so I switched, too. Then after an update, it broke mouse selection in terminal, by turning on some crazy option by default. I still have to search how to disable it each time. Ok, things like that happen. Then, after another update, it broke terminal update. Like, your screen scrolls up or down a line and the text does not get redrawn correctly. Is it a wezterm issue? Well, the original vim works flawlessly. So do less, top, and any other terminal programs. Except neovim. No thanks. I dont care how many golden elephants are in the trunk if I cannot drive it.
- maleldil 2y ago
  Vim is more stable simply because it changes less often. Neovim is constantly improving its APIs, and that can break stuff. If you don't want to deal with breaking changes, just don't update. You can still use most plugins.
  - wruza 2y ago
    Breaking changes and mistakes are orthogonal to changes to defaults and changes for no clear reason. This separates stable software from perpetual “nightly” one. With Vim you can update through a couple major versions before even realizing it. For me it usually happens after system crashes (classic reinstall windows twice a decade) and the vim config and my habits just work with a new vim download. If neovim thought that something was broken, it was a very valid reason for a quick change. That’s how changes are made and I think most Vimers respect that. It was a proper community fork, almost a textbook example despite the initial buzz. Everyone got what they needed. But if you refuse to update, it’s a clear signal for ideological mismatch. The usual issue with picking pace, as I see it through years, is that there’s often no clear finish line where you switch to walking again. The pace just stays like that forever and people start to grow tired of changes they were happy about. Will that kill Neovim? I don’t think so. People who migrated to it (opposed to newcomers) were built for a change too and will probably “survive” all that. Is your method of dealing with it valid? In principle I agree, nothing wrong with that either.
  - 112233 2y ago
    How do you propose I update my distro (fedora) and just don't update text editor? Are you in a habit of bringing a chroot with known good versions of your tools to every computer you ssh into? Like, I'd really want to have that. May it be I've missed some new thing that allows me to not update?
pjmlp 2y ago
That is the only reason why while being on Emacs side, on the whole Emacs vs vi, I ended up learning enough vi to be productive on customers' UNIX systems.
wruza 2y ago
Neovim turned itself into a pop-blink IDE which some people never wanted. It's good that it serves the needs of its fans, but it's also good that Vim stayed in its own tracks. Losing Vim as it is would be a great loss for many.
- rob137 2y ago
  What does 'pop-blink' mean in this context?
  - wruza 2y ago
    Something pops out and blinks on itself while you are typing. At least that's what I've seen in neovim "ads" videos back in the day.
    - melodyogonna 2y ago
      Very annoying. I decided to move from manually creating my own config to using Astronvim and there were just so many distracting things in the default installation. The good thing is that you can disable what you don't want - which I did. The bad thing is that finding the right option or the actual plugin that is bringing the functionality you don't want takes some time.
      - CGamesPlay 2y ago
        Was the prebuilt configuration worth it in the end then? I recently started a from-scratch config and followed kickstart, which is pretty minimal and also not a plugin/distribution/self-updating thing, it’s just an example config file you can copy.
        melodyogonna 2y ago
        Yeah. Once you understand the configuration it's really nice, it is also well documented.
      - 2y ago
yodsanklai 2y ago
I switched to VSCode with vim mode. I think it's a good tradeoff to get IDE features with modal editing.
- wyclif 2y ago
  Did you use the Vim or the Neovim plugin? I have had a hard time trying to get either to play nice with VSCode.
  - yodsanklai 2y ago
    I use VSCodeVim. I have used for a while without trouble. There are some issues, for instance, bookmarks don't work for me. Never tried neovim.
bitbasher 2y ago
I would prefer to use vim, but most plugins are limited to neovim these days. I also feel the overall speed of neovim is better and less janky when interacting with buffers and navigating files. The treesitter highlighting in neovim is also better/supports more files out of the box than vim. In vim I was far too used to syntax highlighting being broke halfway through a file for one reason or another (lines too long, syntax new or broken, etc). I dislike setting up neovim, but I also dislike vim's heavy use of language specific plugins. In a perfect world I'd have lsp+treesitter in vim out of the box and no need to install any plugins.

Many of the Vim nerds I know, including myself, have switched over to Neovim. Only when using a remote server with a default installation do I use regular old Vim.

mmooss 2y ago

From the Stack Overflow survey: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42811182 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42811182 Vim 21.6% Neovim 12.5% I wonder what it looked like in prior years.

joeblubaugh 2y ago
I’m willing to believe that “vim” combines some neovim users, but I’m not surprised that the original is still more popular. Anecdotally vim seems to ship new features faster than it did 3 years ago.
- wirrbel 2y ago
  Braam really took Neovim personally and got better at getting stuff into vim that he wouldn't merge before once neovim was arround as a competitor. I really lost track of vim in the last years because neovim is just a solid platform with an active community. But honestly at work, I think I am the only one using either a vim or emacs (I kind of use neovim and emacs but primarily neovim). In my childhood there was a TV series called "The last of his class" and it really showed old people (retirement age) doing jobs that will be gone once their retire. While some jobs truly vanished, others just transformed so drastically that they cannot be likened anymore to the job those folks did. Anyway, I feel we are watching changes in developer tooling that will be seen as the end of an era. * https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Der_Letzte_seines_Standes%3F https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Der_Letzte_seines_Standes%3F
  - mmooss 2y ago
    Why do Neovim users feel the need to take down Bram and Vim? Now you are taking credit for Bram's work! Why not make an application you love and leave everyone else alone? The community's behavior - what I see - is a deterrent to using Neovim.
    - Anthony-G 2y ago
      > Now you are taking credit for Bram's work! That’s a baseless accusation. I’ve been using Vim for about 25 years, and over the years have contributed small changes to some of the default plugins maintained by third parties (mostly language syntax and `filetype` configuration files). I have yet to even try Neovim but I too noticed that the rate of minor version releases and new features in Vim had increased after the Neovim project got off the ground.
      - mmooss 2y ago
        It's not at all baseless - the basis is the parent (now GGP) comment, even if you disagree with the analysis.
    - wirrbel 2y ago
      It’s astonishing that you can arrive at this conclusion from my comment. He did great work, his development process did not scale. I am happy that I was able to use vim for more than a decade prior to neovim. The fact that after the neovim fork vims development started to pick up speed again is a fact (and doesn’t devalue bram’s work in any way). I am happy with bram’s work on vim and with the neovim devs and their work on neovim.
      - mmooss 2y ago
        > his development process did not scale I hope my development projects fail like Moolenaar's! Vim has been extraordinarily successful for decades, possibly the top 5 or 10 FOSS projects ever (?). Citing Vim as an example of development process failure is really incredible.
        2y ago

gtsop 2y ago

I went back and forth quite a lot until i decided to stick to vim. The reason being that I want to gain deep knowledge of my editor instead of depending on a gazillion plugins that occasionally break. Now, I understand this is something you can do with both vim and neovim, however the documentation of neovim is littered with both the vim docs and the new lua docs, and there is a vibe of "you already know all of vim, here is the lua equivalent", which made it very inaccessible to me. I decided I'll spend the time in the more simple editor of the two and maybe reevaluate this decision again in 3-4 years

nicoloren 2y ago
I did the same. I mostly use Vim without plugin and a simple vimrc file. For the heavy stuff and big projects I use VSCode.
- jackthetab 2y ago
  :s/VSCode/Jetbrains/
  - syndicatedjelly 2y ago
    Wow!
- gtsop 2y ago
  I still use a bloated version of vim for my day job, since it involves huge react+ts apps. But i slowly build up a clean vimrc while writting my pet projects

openmarkand 2y ago

I have tried several times and I always switched back to vanilla vim. Neovim has various nice features but it requires a lot of time to migrate correctly IMHO. 20 years of habits are hard to leave, I think. Sure the configuration file is retro compatible, but some of the plugins are better suited for neovim and vice versa. I use a dozen of them and if I switch permanently to neovim I'd like to start fresh using more "modern" alternatives that make use of the newer features.

emblaegh 2y ago
When I migrated years ago (mostly to get access to some plugins), nvim gladly swallowed my old configuration with no changes. Then I could change to lua and other modern features at my own pace.
- fp64 2y ago
  …I still haven’t switched to lua, all I need still works fine
- Flimm 2y ago
  By "swallowed", I thought you meant that Neovim silently deleted your files. I'm glad the context makes it clear that it didn't.
myaccountonhn 2y ago
I found the neovim community to operate a bit like the node ecosystem, you pull in a plugin for every problem that solves already solved problems their own way. The plugins are also very flashy with tons of animations, colors and emojis, which to me is just distracting. That said I think people should use what they like, and I am happy that there is a big community developing an alternative to VSCode. I just didn't feel it was for me. I ended up moving to Kakoune. The community is small but the tool is so much better designed and integrates well with unix. That means that i can usually glue together whatever I need myself with 1-3 lines of config and don't need an entire plugin when I want something that isn't built-in.
- 2y ago

bawolff 2y ago

People who describe themselves as "vim nerds" might not be representitive of the average vim user.

mmooss 2y ago
Maybe, but it's hard to be a vim user without being somewhat of a vim nerd. At least you have to understand a new concept of interface, several modes, and lots of keyboard shortcuts - that would make you a nerd in any other application.
- bawolff 2y ago
  Maybe, but i use vim everyday. I have no intention of switching to neovim simply because i don't know what the difference even is. There are levels to vim usage, and you can still be very productive while only knowing the basic keyboard shortcuts.

112233 2y ago

Neovim sounded like a good idea, so I switched, too. Then after an update, it broke mouse selection in terminal, by turning on some crazy option by default. I still have to search how to disable it each time. Ok, things like that happen. Then, after another update, it broke terminal update. Like, your screen scrolls up or down a line and the text does not get redrawn correctly. Is it a wezterm issue? Well, the original vim works flawlessly. So do less, top, and any other terminal programs. Except neovim. No thanks. I dont care how many golden elephants are in the trunk if I cannot drive it.

maleldil 2y ago
Vim is more stable simply because it changes less often. Neovim is constantly improving its APIs, and that can break stuff. If you don't want to deal with breaking changes, just don't update. You can still use most plugins.
- wruza 2y ago
  Breaking changes and mistakes are orthogonal to changes to defaults and changes for no clear reason. This separates stable software from perpetual “nightly” one. With Vim you can update through a couple major versions before even realizing it. For me it usually happens after system crashes (classic reinstall windows twice a decade) and the vim config and my habits just work with a new vim download. If neovim thought that something was broken, it was a very valid reason for a quick change. That’s how changes are made and I think most Vimers respect that. It was a proper community fork, almost a textbook example despite the initial buzz. Everyone got what they needed. But if you refuse to update, it’s a clear signal for ideological mismatch. The usual issue with picking pace, as I see it through years, is that there’s often no clear finish line where you switch to walking again. The pace just stays like that forever and people start to grow tired of changes they were happy about. Will that kill Neovim? I don’t think so. People who migrated to it (opposed to newcomers) were built for a change too and will probably “survive” all that. Is your method of dealing with it valid? In principle I agree, nothing wrong with that either.
- 112233 2y ago
  How do you propose I update my distro (fedora) and just don't update text editor? Are you in a habit of bringing a chroot with known good versions of your tools to every computer you ssh into? Like, I'd really want to have that. May it be I've missed some new thing that allows me to not update?

pjmlp 2y ago

That is the only reason why while being on Emacs side, on the whole Emacs vs vi, I ended up learning enough vi to be productive on customers' UNIX systems.

wruza 2y ago

Neovim turned itself into a pop-blink IDE which some people never wanted. It's good that it serves the needs of its fans, but it's also good that Vim stayed in its own tracks. Losing Vim as it is would be a great loss for many.

rob137 2y ago
What does 'pop-blink' mean in this context?
- wruza 2y ago
  Something pops out and blinks on itself while you are typing. At least that's what I've seen in neovim "ads" videos back in the day.
  - melodyogonna 2y ago
    Very annoying. I decided to move from manually creating my own config to using Astronvim and there were just so many distracting things in the default installation. The good thing is that you can disable what you don't want - which I did. The bad thing is that finding the right option or the actual plugin that is bringing the functionality you don't want takes some time.
    - CGamesPlay 2y ago
      Was the prebuilt configuration worth it in the end then? I recently started a from-scratch config and followed kickstart, which is pretty minimal and also not a plugin/distribution/self-updating thing, it’s just an example config file you can copy.
      - melodyogonna 2y ago
        Yeah. Once you understand the configuration it's really nice, it is also well documented.
    - 2y ago

yodsanklai 2y ago

I switched to VSCode with vim mode. I think it's a good tradeoff to get IDE features with modal editing.

wyclif 2y ago
Did you use the Vim or the Neovim plugin? I have had a hard time trying to get either to play nice with VSCode.
- yodsanklai 2y ago
  I use VSCodeVim. I have used for a while without trouble. There are some issues, for instance, bookmarks don't work for me. Never tried neovim.

bitbasher 2y ago

I would prefer to use vim, but most plugins are limited to neovim these days. I also feel the overall speed of neovim is better and less janky when interacting with buffers and navigating files. The treesitter highlighting in neovim is also better/supports more files out of the box than vim. In vim I was far too used to syntax highlighting being broke halfway through a file for one reason or another (lines too long, syntax new or broken, etc). I dislike setting up neovim, but I also dislike vim's heavy use of language specific plugins. In a perfect world I'd have lsp+treesitter in vim out of the box and no need to install any plugins.