[johncoltrane]

It's only a rabbit hole if you want it to be one.

Vim only has that reputation of needing a lot of config because too many newbies want to skip the learning phase and just jump in between two JIRA tickets. Of course you will need a lot of plugins and pre-baked stuff and hand-holding in that case!

The more sensible path is to learn Vim properly, and configure it as you go. It means that there's never a "take the week-end to configure Vim for React" moment: it's one line here, two lines there and it never really stops because you work with new languages and libs, etc.

As far as plugins. I can use Vim just fine without plugins or without my config but half of the plugins I use are written by me and tailored around my own needs so I guess those are the ones I need the most for my daily use.