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by elpatoisthebest 1762 days ago
Gvim isn't really an "or" in this case, it's just a GUI for vim.

Some things I like about neovim over vim.

- Lua integration as first class citizen.

- Treesitter

- lsp built in

- Feeling that the community is super active and in a period of movement.

I love being able to hack and add specific functionality to my own workflow in lua just as part of the editor. I can add features in a way that I just can't in VS Code or vim. It's no emacs level of hackability, but it's a happy medium for me.

1 comments

> can add features in a way that I just can't in VS Code

I have no knowledge about VSCode's JS nor NVim's Lua APIs beyond that one can write extensions in these langs. Would you be able to expand on what can you do with Lua in Nvim that can't be done in VSCode? That could really be a tipping point for me.

Can't say much about Lua, but the huge advantage both Vim and Emacs have over many other editors: you don't need to write a plugin to add a feature. Plugins are just scripted functions. You can press `:` and define a new keybinding right there while editing a file. Or write a function in the .vimrc and it'll be loaded at every start. Or try out other colors for the UI or syntax elements using the same commands used in syntax definitions. It's all directly accessible to the user with complete documentation in the editor.

Meanwhile the "hello world" tutorial for extending VS Code starts out with installing Node.js & multiple npm packages and compiling some source file.

For a power user it's just not the same, and there's no way I'd ever switch to another editor without this flexibility.

That's a really nice a distinction! Thanks