| Average joe-schmoe Neovim user here. My goal is not to emulate VS Code and other similar software. I enjoy Neovim for programming mainly because... - First and foremost, I love the text editing features Vim has (eg. the movements, modes, keys etc). It just feels great on my hands. - It's minimal. Well, you are free to make it as minimal or as bloated as you would like to ;) - For me, it sort of gamifies text editing. I don't claim that using Vim makes me x-times more efficient at programming than someone else, but I do enjoy the thrill of learning a new, quicker way to make some changes. - Vim/Neovim offers me a seemingly endless amount of things to learn. Some may see this as a negative thing, but I see it as a feature. It's truly like a skill or a hobby. You can learn the basics and be perfectly fine, but you can also dive deep into more ways to improve. I love this. - I love how configurable it is, and also that you can actually learn about how it works. - Also if I'm being honest, I feel like a myself and a lot of other Neovim users are basically masochists to some extent. |
> …myself and a lot of other Neovim users are basically masochists to some extent.
It's great of you to say this, and heartwarming to see a sense of self-awareness on HN.
It's easy to rationalise our tech choices away (vim = speed, efficiency, freedom!). It's harder to admit that we may have chosen our tools simply because it's fun to walk a learning curve that runs sharply from pain to joy. Of course we could pick an easier tool! But then our path runs from apathy to apathy! And we'd be making it alongside people who think tools are just tools, instead of within a counterculture of likeminded people who think that tools are _everything_.
Maybe I should give neovim another shot…