+Taking the Plunge - NVim

The accessibility of VSCode is pretty unbelievable. There is a reason why 71% of developers surveyed on Stack Overflow use it. It has leagues of community support, and looks like it’ll be the predominant IDE for the foreseeable future.

But recently I decided that I needed something different.

When is it time to upgrade your toolset? I came to the realization that the limiting factor on how quickly and efficiently I could edit was my knowledge of VSCode.

After pairing with some colleagues, and seeing just how much they could do with a few keystrokes, I knew I needed to convert to a dedicated text editor. The two main selling points for me were:

  1. Editing text at the speed of thought. I’ve worked with countless end-users and engineers that know exactly what text they want, and where they want it, but the translation takes so many steps. To be able to change text as quickly as my brain can process it is a huge quality-of-life improvement for me in more areas than just coding.

  2. Extensibility without the ‘magic’. Most widely-used editors can do everything the others can. There’s virtually no competitive advantage among them. But the reason I like NVim and Vim over something like VSCode is the same reason I’d rather own a 1985 Ford Ranger over a 2022 Mercedes Benz. Both will get you from A to B, but you can open up the hood on an old truck and know exactly what you’re looking at. Good luck finding the battery or fuse box on this thing

Of course, it took a month or more to surpass my efficiency from previous editors, but the peaks and valleys of self-improvement are feelings that I’m happy to entertain.