I used Vim for over 15 years. I then used NeoVim for a couple years. I tried Helix for several months. I then tried VS Code for the first time and only lasted

I used Vim for over 15 years. I then used NeoVim for a couple years. I tried Helix for several months. I then tried VS Code for the first time and only lasted about eight weeks. I gave Zed a try but gave up because it required a GPU which my machine didn't have and there's a login button on the editor which I found ridiculous (I don't use GitHub, how am I supposed to log in). I then tried RustRover / JetBrains products for a few weeks. Ultimately, I ended up back in Vim8 (default install on my LTS distro). I like to think I've given each editor a fair try. 1. Vanilla vim is just there and works. You can use it with or without plugins and it works great. The built in :make / compiler options are a viable alternative to lsp / linter plugins. Also, it has ctags support built in which works for dozens of languages. You can also use a linter/lsp plugin by adding to your optional plugins and simply do `:packadd vim-lsp` or whatever the plugin name is whenever you want to use it. It's literally a text editor, with optional plugins. 2. NeoVim is "plugin hell". It's an editor that people use as an IDE and require a dozen plugins to do so. You could use it like Vim (see above), but no one does that. I don't have any issues with NeoVim as a tool, but the community and "influencers" are annoying to me. 3. Helix was a nice IDE out of the box, no plugins required. Ultimately I found the different key mappings to be annoying for me (15+ years of vim muscle memory). It's not a bad alternative if you want the "IDE experience" in the terminal. It's certainly better than stringing 24 plugins together and hoping none of them are ever compromised. I won't discuss the other editors or IDES. I don't want to hurt anyone's feelings :)