[ptero]

I have been using Vim as my primary editor for many years and am happy with it. People I know who use developer editors are split between Vim and Emacs. Neovim usage is minimal. Why? It is an honest question.

I see developers of the editor happy, which is a good thing, but IMO to get more users NV must show why it is better from a user perspective -- have several demos on the powerful things easily achieved with NV that are painful with Vim (via plugins is OK).

If NV devs can do this, it will go far. If not, then the case for an upgrade hasn't been made yet for most users. My 2c.

[gkya]

I'm an Emacs user and that's because the Unix way doesn't quite work out well in practice: composition is hard, requires textual transformation with many possible edge cases as glue which is hard to build and maintain and is bug-prone, and interfaces are cryptic, only partly portable and inconsistent. Elisp on the other hand is a nicer primitive for building my day-to-day tools: Uniform data format everywhere; buffers and processes are nicer primitives as an interface to other programs in the system; single, extensible programming language (with lexical-scope added and threads coming in, Elisp is quite pleasant to program in in fact).

NeoVim seems to bring these qualities into Vim sphere, giving the users and extension developers (in Emacs many extensions are apps themselves) better primitives to develop tools and applications, and allow to abstract-away Unix userland which is way too low-level and as I said above, not that friendly and helpful environment to live in. It holds on to what makes Vim interesting (modal editing, the range-command-object-movement style editing commands, ex mode) while adding a better API (VimL is...).

[cygned]

I used vim and neovim for quite some time and eventually switched back to Emacs. The "you do not have to leave your environment" is actually quite nice. magit and org-mode are awesome. Color scheming is actually easier.

Still having trouble with identation, though. vim is just smarter ...

[thomastjeffery]

> Still having trouble with identation, though. vim is just smarter ...

While that is still generally true in my experience, it helps a lot to set c-style indentation to linux-style instead of gnu-style.

From the top of my .emacs:

    (setq c-default-style "linux"
          c-basic-offset)

[gkya]

FWIW, I disable electric-indent globally and use C-j instead of RET which indents after new-line (it's bound to electric-newline-and-maybe-indent, I believe it's the default binding):

C-j runs the command electric-newline-and-maybe-indent (found in global-map), which is an interactive compiled Lisp function in ‘electric.el’.

It is bound to C-j.

(electric-newline-and-maybe-indent)

Insert a newline. If ‘electric-indent-mode’ is enabled, that’s that, but if it is disabled then additionally indent according to major mode. Indentation is done using the value of ‘indent-line-function’. In programming language modes, this is the same as TAB. In some text modes, where TAB inserts a tab, this command indents to the column specified by the function ‘current-left-margin’.

[Longhanks]

Without neovim, vim wouldn't have gotten the async features. The fact that it's a community driven project and not dictated by one single BDFL makes it a lot more sympathetic for me.

[ptero]

> Without neovim, vim wouldn't have gotten the async features.

With this I wholeheartedly agree. Without NV async would likely still be on the Vim wishlist. And if neovim wants a small donation I will gladly do that to say thanks.

However, now Vim does have async support as well, this use case is gone. NV needs to find the next one (and next and next). If their code is cleaner and easier to work on they will permanently overtake vim in features sooner rather than later.

[mundanevoice]

Vim is also community driven. Having a BDFL doesn't mean that the model is bad. Python, Linux all have BDFLs and they are blossoming.

Also, saying that Vim wouldn't have gotten the async features without Neovim is wrong. It would have come in sooner or later, Neovim sure made it a priority.

[executesorder66]

The main reason NeoVim exists at all is because Bram Moolenaar refused to accept any patches for async support. People already did the work for him and he didn't want it.

So they decided to write their own text editor that supported async plugins. Bram got butthurt and didn't want to lose a large portion of his user base, so he added async support.

NeoVim's first public release (version 0.1) was released in December 2015. [0] And you can see that Vim development really picked up in early 2016. [1]

Coincidence?

Anyway, both text editors are awesome, and Vim is better off now that it has competition. The async features would never have come without the competition of a rival project.

[0] https://neovim.io/news/2015/december/ [1] https://github.com/vim/vim/graphs/contributors

[DSMan195276]

> The main reason NeoVim exists at all is because Bram Moolenaar refused to accept any patches for async support. People already did the work for him and he didn't want it.

That is an unfair description. When it was submitted to Bram it was incomplete and not completely functioning, and he did receive feedback on it.

[mundanevoice]

> The main reason NeoVim exists at all is because Bram Moolenaar refused to accept any patches for async support. People already did the work for him and he didn't want it.

This is not true. If the work was not complete and not as how the lead maintainer/developer wants it. It is highly unlikely that it would be merged. I suggest you actually go and read the mailing list when this happened. I have seen it.

[executesorder66]

If I remember correctly, the guy kept changing his patch to meet Bram's conditions, but then Bram kept adding more requirements, to the point where it seemed like Bram was just making up excuses for not accepting the patch.

I could be wrong though. Please can you link the mailing list. (I can't find it) I'll read it and take back what I said, if that is the case.

Edit: spelling

[DSMan195276]

This thread is basically over already, but here's a few links to what I think are relevant messages from the discussion (And from these links you can largely see the whole thing, though there's a few other threads spread out elsewhere):

https://groups.google.com/d/msg/vim_dev/-4pqDJfHCsM/rTnUuZTg...

https://groups.google.com/d/msg/vim_dev/-4pqDJfHCsM/skO2ee5k...

Personally the last post is the most important. He's basically saying that he knows there's clearly problems with his patch, but that he doesn't want to work on it until Bram takes the time to look at it and tell them what's wrong. He wants to push it in even though it's not 100% functional, to the point that he suggests merging it and calling it "experimental-timers".

The above isn't 100% related to Neovim, but below is the thread where Thiago Arruda essentially decides to create Neovim, and the other thread is brought up in this one which is why it is relevant:

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/vim_dev/Tarruda%7...

https://groups.google.com/d/msg/vim_dev/65jjGqS1_VQ/VBLymmdW...

I recommend looking at the dates, Thiago posted the concept patch 12/4/13, and Christian ZyX responded 5 days later, and then Thiago responds that he's done working on the patch because of a list of reasons: One being he has heard stories of long response times from the Vim developers, Two being that 5 days was too long of a response time and that Bram hasn't responded to his patch, Three being that it was too complicated and he wouldn't be able to make it work, and Four being that he didn't want to work on it if it wasn't guarantee to ever get into Vim.

Let me know if there's a problem with the links.

[baldfat]

I found the fork / refactor of VIM by NeoVIM to be very hostile and even naming itself "New Vim" made me not want to support NeoVIM. I have been using VIM since it was on my Amiga in the mid 90s.

VIM has been a stellar project that is due a lot of respect. Even the funding for VIM is reflected back to giving to Uganda children charity.

> NeoVim exists at all is because Bram Moolenaar refused to accept any patches for async support. People already did the work for him and he didn't want it.

Untrue: "It's going to be an awful lot of work, with the result that not all systems will be supported, new bugs introduced and what's the gain for the end user exactly?

Total refactoring is not a solution. It's much better to improve what we have. Perhaps with some small refactorings specifically aimed at making Vim work better for users." Brian Moolenaar https://groups.google.com/forum/m/#!topic/vim_dev/x0BF9Y0Uby...

NeoVIM kind of said that VIM was just a mess and it would be impossible to grown past where it is. To me this was worst then Ubuntu having it's own Unity and Mir. This was just drama and seemed over the top disrespectful to Brian.

[Trd]

It's offensive for neovim to call itself neovim but it's alright for vim to be called vim? For the record, vim means Vi iMproved. Bill Joy invented Vi, not braam.

Neovim is very much to vim what vim was to Vi.

And Vi is what should be credited for the more important concepts found in those editors and their reproduction in IDE like the various Vi like plugins.

Braam losing a spiritual monopoly on such a great editor concept like Vi can only be a good thing.

For something you call worse than unity, it works pretty nicely, stable, fast, with far more readable code and is already on its way to become a great embeddable editor so that we can use the real Vi in IDE instead of pale imitations.

[baldfat]

Your wrong in terms of how VIM came about and name.

VIM originally meant "Vi IMitation". It wasn't till 1993 that it became "Vi Improved."

Actually VIM is not a direct fork of VI. VIM comes from Stevie editor from Atari ST and Amiga days. (I actually started with Stevie).

Here is the tree from ed to VIM

ed > Bill Joy and company then made em > en > ex AKA vi

Joy left development of VI in June 1979 and joined corporate life working with BSD.

vi (Unix\BSD) > Stevie editor (Atari ST) > VIM (Amiga)

Then chaos hit. From 1981 onward clones and implementations were incompatible and progress kind of grind to a halt due to license. That is when Stevie editor hit and then when Bram Moolenaar made VIM. He reimplimented it for Amiga and added features one being plugins. Vi had no plugins and very little customization.

Here is why your analogy is wrong: LICENSING "While commercial vendors could work with Bill Joy's codebase (and continue to use it today), many people could not. Because Joy had begun with Ken Thompson's ed editor, ex and vi were derivative works and could not be distributed except to people who had an AT&T source license."

So it is not at all like this fork. I find that people have taken sides without even knowing the history of VIM and make assumptions.

[cookiecaper]

Yes, competition is very healthy and good for an ecosystem overall. Though the entire sector my business operated in eventually got shut down due to unscrupulous competitors, can't deny that competitors really lit a fire under my butt compared to the first year, when I was in the field alone.

[mundanevoice]

Also, I like Neovim and have been using it on/off since a couple of years. But I haven't found a GUI equivalent of Macvim with Neovim.

[gglanzani]

Try Vimr (on GitHub). It is amazing.

[StevePerkins]

I use Vim with a customized `.vimfile`, but rarely if ever do I tinker with a lot of plugins. If I'm doing "development", then usually I'm using a JetBrains IDE product with the IdeaVim plugin. If I'm in vanilla Vim, then it's because I'm just doing text editing from a shell, and have no need for a lot of plugins.

This is anecdotal speculation, but I imagine that most Vim users are in a similar boat. I talk to so many lifelong Vim users who have never even heard of "pathogen" or other plugin management systems. I'm pretty sure that heavy plugin users are the minority.

Most people who seem excited about NeoVim (or even talk about it at all), fall into three categories:

1) Heavy plugin users, who want plugins with some feature not well-supported by Vim.

2) Developers who would like to embed Vim within their own applications, but find the classic Vim codebase or license unsuitable for this.

3) "Ideologues". People who don't like Bram Moolenaar. People who wish he would have accepted a pull request that he declined or ignored. People who wish he would release Vim more frequently, make it more trendy, or bloat it up with this or that new feature. People who just don't like the way that the Vim project is run, ideologically speaking. (EDIT: i.e. the brigade crowd who's downvoting every comment that isn't unqualified praise and support for NeoVim.)

So like I said, I'm pretty sure that the overwhelming majority of Vim users do not fall into category #1. And the other two categories are tiny subsets of that first one. So to turn the question around... why WOULD people go out of their way to abandon the default, and flock to something else which might drift away from compatibility over time?

[soperj]

Competition brings the best out of people. New ideas should be accepted even if it makes things drift away from compatibility. BSD started w/ unix code and eventually refactored all that old code out, doesn't make it a bad project simply because it's no longer a drop in replacement for unix. It serves other purposes.

[nolliebs180]

I am a developer using vim & neovim daily. My setup before VM/container popularity was mostly ssh into a remote dev box, then tmux+vim there on the remote host. Tmux mostly for its split-pane feature which I like better than vim splits.

Now since I can do most of my work locally, neovim's terminal support has, for me, completely replaced my use of tmux splits. Having moved all my split usage out of tmux into neovim has simplified my setup and keybindings. And I grok and am more comfortable now with vim/neovim splits.

[empath75]

The simple answer is probably the correct one. It's not included by default in any distributions.

[cosarara97]

Some distros do have it in the official repos https://github.com/neovim/neovim/wiki/Installing-Neovim

[executesorder66]

Yes, but it is not installed as the default text editor. Unlike vi/vim/nano

[cosarara97]

The default is usually vi or nano, not full vim. So installing vim or neovim should take about the same effort.

[vopi]

In what distros? Ubuntu comes with vim.

[pcmonk]

Yeah, but it's vim.tiny. They don't even alias it to `vim` because it's not full vim.

[cryptarch]

Debian Stable (without a DE) only comes with nano AFAIK.

[baldfat]

It's in the official repos for many distros including OpenSUSE.

I actually am fixing up the install documents even though I don't use Neovim

[ptero]

Debian (albeit only stretch) has it.

[JdeBP]

... and that's version 0.1.7 .

[jamesrcole]

> Neovim usage is minimal.

I don't know how much it is used, but what are you basing that claim on?

[quasiverse]

It's clear from the context that he's talking about people he knows, not usage in general.

[ptero]

As I said -- just personal observations of software developers and engineers I cross paths with.

[fao_]

Honestly for me the main reason was that it finally has builtin `:terminal`. The plugins for use with vim have always been slightly buggy for me.

[101km]

Can you please elaborate how you make use of the built in terminal emulation of neovim? Whenever I see a mention I think "neat" but have yet to integrate it into my workflow.

[has2k1]

Not parent, but I use Neovim and Ranger [1] filemanager and I have a shortcut to open Ranger in a split or full window from which I can browse and open a file. You can do this only because Neovim has a built-in terminal. This may end up replacing vinegar [2] as my in-VIM filemanager.

[1] https://github.com/ranger/ranger

[2] https://github.com/tpope/vim-vinegar

[cschneid]

So the nesting you have is Shell -> Nvim -> Ranger, so ranger is contained inside of a vim split?

Mind sharing some docs on how to do that?

[Tarean]

Lazy version would be `:vsplit | lcd %:h | term ranger<cr>`.

`vsplit` splits the window vertically. `lcd` sets the bufferlocal working directory which is a new feature in neovim. `term ranger` launches the terminal emulator. If you wanted to be fancy you could add a toggle that reuses the same ranger instance which'd add an additional ~10 loc.

[has2k1]

I use a plugin ranger.vim [1]. Although it works for plain VIM, it is very clunky, since ranger is opened with a !command you get a blocking terminal.

The nesting really is tmux -> Shell -> Nvim -> Ranger.

https://github.com/francoiscabrol/ranger.vim

[soraminazuki]

Stuff like fzf (https://github.com/junegunn/fzf) works nicer with terminal emulation.

[nat]

I use it a lot when doing exploratory SQL work or writing queries. I can tinker with my query in one pane and send it over to the `psql` repl in the other.

I do use psql's `\e` command to open the previous query in your `$EDITOR`, but that only lets me get the single previous query, and throws out any comments.

[nolliebs180]

Like a lot of other IDEs, it is convenient to have a console to focus over to then run ad-hoc cmdline stuff or run tests for the currently active project. This is what I use :terminal for the most. It was helpful for me to setup the below keybingds for focusing back/forth between a :terminal split and my "editing" splits:

    tnoremap <C-h> <c-\><c-n><c-w>h
    tnoremap <C-j> <C-\><C-n><C-w>j
    tnoremap <C-k> <C-\><C-n><C-w>k
    tnoremap <C-l> <C-\><C-n><C-w>l
    nnoremap <C-h> <c-w>h
    nnoremap <C-j> <c-w>j
    nnoremap <C-k> <c-w>k
    nnoremap <C-l> <c-w>l

[fao_]

I use it to either run microservices for testing, or for testing code in the erlang shell. It's MUCH easier to copy and paste inside vim and be able to copy logs out into a buffer to run sed expressions on it, than if I were using another terminal.

[lmm]

I set up a new machine a couple of days ago. Looked for neovim in FreeBSD ports. It wasn't there. Shrugged and installed vim.

I'd happily have switched if only for the code quality reputation. But it needs to be easy - no, that's too weak a word, it needs to be trivial - to install in the usual way I install things.

[SyrupThinker]

This is incorrect, neovim is available in the FreeBSD ports. [1]

[https://svnweb.freebsd.org/ports/head/editors/neovim/]