| 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? |