Effective Neovim: An Instant IDE [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=stqUbv-5u2s

by tu7001 • 3 years ago

78 58 3 years ago

random3• 3 years ago

I think (neo)vim has many years ahead, but also think the market overlaps with vscode. I believe that, for the average users, defaults, including a default plugin marketplace makes most of the difference. It would be interesting to see some proper data about user editor preferences https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today%205-y&ge...

AlexSW• 3 years ago

The overlap with VS Code is very helpful for Neovim too though, as Neovim integrates well with technologies and plugins intended for VS Code. My C++/Rust debugger setup comes from installing VS Code, getting it to install its debugger, and then pointing Neovim at it.

rockwotj• 3 years ago

Yeah I feel like if you don’t want to spend time tweaking configs then vscode is just the better option.

vivekd• 3 years ago

I don't think you're really meant to tweak configs much in neovim. Just get a basic config file off GitHub and then update here and there as you find stuff you like/need.

I know that sounds complex but if you're coding (which I assume many neovim users are) should be fairly straightforward

myaccountonhn• 3 years ago

Or helix is a good option.

lawn4• 3 years ago

I have a hard time buying the argument against changing defaults.

I do get that the Vim editing model is hard, but that professional developers refuse using a tool because you have to change some defaults and customize it a little is too much.

It's really not that hard or time consuming to setup, for more gains than many of the courses or experiences people have put themselves through.

And it's not like it's a "vscode vs Vim" thing, I see the same argument inside the Vim community too where people refuse plugins because it's too much work, or even switch to Vim-like editors that don't have a plugin system as if it was a positive thing.

What gives? I'm sure it's not as easy as everyone just being lazy.

eviks5• 3 years ago

if you deny reality (it's hard and time consuming), you won't buy its outcome

rgoulter2• 3 years ago

It's got to do with (broadly) accessibility / enthusiasm.

Enthusiasts are familiar with a lot more, know the domain, and so are able to navigate the intricacies. -- There's an xkcd comic which points out that you're probably under-estimating what it takes to be familiar with this stuff. https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/2501:_Average_Fam... -- And while it's nice to be enthusiastic about stuff, not everyone's going to have full enthusiasm for everything they do.

In terms of accessibility:

Having "bad defaults out of the box" just doesn't make sense compared to "having good defaults out of the box". If it's very unusual, or unintuitive to use, that's just added friction to get someone to learn. (And if fewer people adopting a tool leads to a smaller community).

There's plenty of stuff which isn't so hard if you know where to look.. whereas, without knowing where to look, it's confusing to navigate.

There's a communal cost to having fragmented/bespoke setups; if everyone's using pretty much the same thing, then anyone can help anyone out. -- Someone familiar with the intricacies will be able to understand the differences, but a novice might not know which bespoke thing would be best to copy.

alhadrad• 3 years ago

The issue I consistently run into with my customized setup is it is hard to replicate. Deploy it to a new system always results in hours of headache. Many neovim plugins rely on node js which is a dumpster fire. Any time I update anything a plugin invariably breaks. I have to spend an hour or two troubleshooting to get my editor up and rolling again. This is a major pain in the ass.

Lukeisun2• 3 years ago

I had tried getting into a vim about a year and a half ago, I used chris@machines LunarVim and I think that about after about a month I quit. I struggled with learning vim motions and how to configure it. Granted, I may like it more now that I know more. But, this video got me to try neovim again and I have not switched off for a few months now. I daily drive now and it is thanks to this video. The configuration is simple to understand and a lot easier to come to grips with. The video is a little outdated in that some parts don't match with how the configuration is set up now, but it was easy to figure out how to work with it (sorry my memory isn't great on what issues I ran into, skimming through the video it seems like Packer->Lazy is one).

aquova• 3 years ago

I've been an avid Vim/Neovim user for several years now, but I've never been able to really get into some of those pre-made configurations like LunarVim. I personally only like to add plugins for things I have identified as lacking, but I can see why a pre-made solution would be nice. However, last I looked I found the documentation rather lacking. Even getting a list of what plugins they add, or a general sense of the keybindings they've changed was difficult, not to mention the difficulty if someone was learning Vim for the first time on top of that.

rcarr• 3 years ago

The video is a little outdated in that some parts don't match with how the configuration is set up now

This is exactly my problem any time I try and get in to Vim/Emacs/NeoVim, even when trying some pre built config like Doom Emacs, LunarVim etc. Everybody has some bespoke setup so following along from a tutorial is a fucking nightmare because inevitably something will be out of date, or they'll be using a different package for say the file browser that makes it incompatible with the one you're using that you picked up from the previous tutorial. Or they'll be using a different package manager entirely, of which a new one seems to come out every year. Or you're fucking around trying to get LSP to work again because something has broke it. Or you'll try installing some kind of manager to let you switch between the different premade versions such as Doom Emacs and SpaceMacs and that won't work properly because Doom has been updated since it was written etc. It's just a never ending torrent of pain. It's the editor equivalent of the JavaScript ecosystem where there's some new shiny half baked bullshit every week. It's so much easier to just use VSCode or Jetbrains and have a consistent and reliable experience every time.

Lukeisun2• 3 years ago

I think that's why kickstart is good to start out with, despite the video being a little outdated it was still easy to reason with. I haven't run into those issues describe but it's probably because I'm still newer to the ecosystem.

angra_mainyu5• 3 years ago

I didn't enjoy lunarvim at all and actually quit nvim several times and was beginning to like doomemacs until I gave Astro a try. Instantly got hooked.

patleeman3• 3 years ago

I recently forced myself to learn vim motions and it's been paying off pretty well. Once it clicked I found myself wanting vim motions everywhere.

I went deep and set up a neovim config, forcing myself to use neovim full time. However my new role requires me to use Intellij and I didn't want to spend hours upon hours figuring out how to replicate the java support in Neovim (and no, it isn't just installing the LSP, my work has some pretty specific intellij setup).

At this point I'm just using Intellij and VSCode with their respective vim plugins and I'm getting about 80% of the utility that I did with pure neovim. The one thing I really love about neovim is that it really forces you to keep your hands on the keyboard and you learn the keybinds very well because otherwise you just can't do the thing you wanted to! I find myself using the mouse a lot in VSCode and Intellij because they give you really handy buttons to click on.

I could probably go pure keyboard if I just sat down and learned all the various keybinds, but who has time for that?

localghost3000• 3 years ago

For IntelliJ, check out what you can do with the .ideavimrc file. You can turn pretty much anything into a vim motion and it has light plugin support as well. Also makes your setup portable.

patleeman3• 3 years ago

Yeah, I've been meaning to spend more time on it, but I've been switching around to different editors a lot lately, so the constant jumping around means I'm trying to keep my vim keybinds as vanilla as possible.

LargeTomato• 3 years ago

The VS Code vim bindings are too slow, incomplete, and they conflict with VS Code's other keybindings. I had to disable VS Code vim mode.

capableweb• 3 years ago

Biggest personal issue with VS codes vim mode is that it only works in the text editor. The beauty of vim/neovim is that the keybindings work everywhere in the UI, not just the text edit window.

roblh• 3 years ago

Have you tried the neovim plugin instead of the regular vim one? I find they have different trade offs, but the neovim one is actually using neovim inside a vscode window and requires a neovim install.

Particularly, I’ve found the undo functionality to be far better with the neovim one, it never screws up. Holding alt and moving a line up and down can sometimes accidentally move your cursor one line higher or lower though.

hinell2• 3 years ago

I basically had to disable entire VS Code. Didn't remove it yet and keep it just in case I need to remember how crappy it's. It has some advantages over neovim though, but they don't outhweigh neovim.

SebastianKra2• 3 years ago

Is there really any truth to the superior customizability (he calls it a Personalized Development Environment) claimed here?

VSCode extensions can change crazy stuff such as [1], and are also more numerous. I don't see much of an advantage to terminal-vim apart from performance and perhaps an inherent joy of building your own tools.

[1] https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=hoovercj...

linsomniac• 3 years ago

My take is that the customizability comes from the init.lua being more right there for you to look at and modify. LunarVim comes with a great set of plugins, but whenever I want to customize something I have to go and start digging to figure out what and where it's happening, how to adjust around it, etc...

petepete• 3 years ago

TJ actually has a video on this very topic

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QMVIJhC9Veg

The tl;dw is that the term 'PDE' means the tool requires some work in order to personalise, but because neovim exposes a robust API that work is fun and rewarding. Additionally, he makes the point that because you configure it in the same language as you script it with (lua), you have much greater control over how all the pieces fit together.

SebastianKra2• 3 years ago

That's a very reasonable justification.

My only gripe is his requirement that the majority of users must make use of the scripting system in order for the program to be considered a PDE. If only 1% of all IntelliJ users ever use the Program Structure Interface or the powerful Live-Templating system, that's still a respectable number in total. And it also doesn't mean IntelliJ is less personalizable.

Maybe a better term would be a DIY-DE.

hinell2• 3 years ago

That's nice but I don't really like when they rename some APIs.. That brings breaking changes you know.

danielvaughn• 3 years ago

Right now I'm building a vscode plugin that renders a webpage directly in the editor. I'm absolutely sure that the vim/neovim proponents are right about how much faster you can be with vim motions, but it'll never match the versatility of vscode primarily because it's built on top of web technologies.

angra_mainyu5• 3 years ago

I think that's pretty much going against the vim mentality of offloading tasks to the appropriate tools.

This is the kind of thing I would expect to see in emacs.

That said, I can't imagine ever wanting to have a website render in my own editor, that's the kind of thing I'd like to use my target browser for.

codethief• 3 years ago

I never really considered using (Neo-)Vim (granted, I did use Emacs for years) but the other day I watched the "0 to LSP in 30min" video[0] by ThePrimeagen and I now I really want to give it a shot!

[0] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=w7i4amO_zaE

bamazizi• 3 years ago

I spend a lot time inside vim/neovim on daily basis. I do have vscode open as well but it's mostly for referencing or file exploration on repos I'm not familiar with.

Building a mental and muscle memory is tough but it requires grinding. You have to put in the time! It took me months!

My biggest mistake was starting and playing around with configurations and plugins for days/weeks and constantly having a broken environment!

Configuration hell is the worst path to get into neovim! Start with the starter kit but avoid going into installing 10s of plugins, custom key-mappings and themes until you have learned the fundamental of motions, navigations and editing.

Starter kit: https://github.com/nvim-lua/kickstart.nvim

angra_mainyu5• 3 years ago

I recommend AstroNvim, it's honestly the best starter configs.

imjonse4• 3 years ago

The ecosystem of vim package managers and plugins is even more diverse and dynamic and hence confusing than the JS frontend one. The more things get built-in (like LSP in neovim) the better. This is the reason there are distributions of vim (Astro, NVChad, Lunar, Lazy) which are convenient for quickly starting but are extra layers or complexity and a source of issues and time wasted.

abound2• 3 years ago

The more things get built-in (like LSP in neovim) the better.

Since someone inevitably mentions Helix on the *vim threads (and vice versa), I'll be that person today.

This is one of the things I think Helix gets right. It has the LSP, fuzzy finder, and a few other modern tablestakes features built-in, which makes it a joy to use. I spent a decade+ using (Neo)vim, and went from a few hundred lines of homegrown vimrc to maybe 6 or 7 lines of Helix config, for a few bits of muscle memory I couldn't shake.

imjonse4• 3 years ago

How much effort was switching to the different keybindings Helix uses?

imjonse4• 3 years ago

Just checked the script and indeed, compared to the youtube video of 10 months ago, the kickstart script now uses 'lazy' instead of 'packer' as a package manager.

_blz2• 3 years ago

LazyVim the distro is different from lazy.nvim the package manager. Both are written by folke and are excellent. Not sure why parent comment says these are extra layers of complexity. LazyVim is written in a way you can selectively disable or enable the plug-ins it uses. I can't imagine why 80% of these plug-ins would ever make their way into neovim core.

angra_mainyu5• 3 years ago

Astro is honestly the best, instantly converted to neovim.

user3939382• 3 years ago

The one component of my IDE that I couldn’t translate is my EA inspections plug-in. There’s no compatible equivalent and it’s an integral part of my workflow.

plugin-baby• 3 years ago

What is EA in this context?

Nezteb• 3 years ago

It looks like a PHP tool: https://plugins.jetbrains.com/plugin/7622-php-inspections-ea...

eviks5• 3 years ago

With so much effort spent on improving the editor ecosystem to the point of creating a new fork, why is the ugly duckling of old defaults so sticky and prevents neovim from becoming effective?

lawn4• 3 years ago

Fwiw they are changing old defaults. What defaults do you think prevents you from being effective, except some large plugins that maybe should be included (like LSP)?

eviks5• 3 years ago

Interesting that illustrating the virtues of the "amazing" help ~9:45 is a typical relatively poor doc: besides the fact that it wastes too much horizontal space due to all the hardcoded line breaks, it misses a simple thing that would make it way faster to understand: a simple picture with relative numbers and a few callouts

sitzkrieg• 3 years ago

how would i view this picture on a machine im talking to over serial?

eviks5• 3 years ago

That's not relevant since it's too small a use case when it comes to learning, but still there are options:

1. by using a serial image protocol

2. by drawing the picture in text

Zhyl• 3 years ago

Sixels?

https://handwiki.org/wiki/Sixel

https://www.arewesixelyet.com/

zamalek• 3 years ago

I recently switched away from Neovim. I had a really deep and ergonomic set of customizations - and I liked where it was. The problem is that it kept breaking with each update of the editor/plugins and I grew too fatigued to keep figuring out how to fix it.

Helix isn't nearly as nice as my purpose-built Neovim setup, but it keeps working.

Effective Neovim: An Instant IDE [video]

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