The Pitch
Every few months, someone asks me why I don’t just use VS Code. The answer is simple: I don’t want to use my mouse. Ever.
Neovim isn’t just a text editor. It’s a philosophy. The idea that every action should be expressible as a sequence of keystrokes — and that those keystrokes should be composable, repeatable, and fast.
The Stack
Here’s what my daily Neovim config looks like:
Plugin Manager: lazy.nvim
Gone are the days of Packer and Vim-Plug. lazy.nvim loads plugins on demand, keeps startup under 40ms, and has the best UI of any plugin manager I’ve used.
-- lazy.nvim bootstrap
local lazypath = vim.fn.stdpath("data") .. "/lazy/lazy.nvim"
if not vim.loop.fs_stat(lazypath) then
vim.fn.system({ "git", "clone", "--filter=blob:none",
"https://github.com/folke/lazy.nvim.git", lazypath })
end
vim.opt.rtp:prepend(lazypath)LSP: The Brain
Native LSP with nvim-lspconfig gives me autocomplete, go-to-definition, rename across files, and inline diagnostics — all without leaving the terminal. For Python, pyright is instant. For Lua, lua_ls understands my config better than I do.
Telescope: The Finder
telescope.nvim is the single plugin I couldn’t live without. Fuzzy file search, live grep, buffer switching, LSP symbol search — all behind <leader>f bindings. It’s faster than any GUI file explorer.
Treesitter: The Painter
Syntax highlighting that actually understands your code’s AST. No more regex-based highlighting that breaks on edge cases. Treesitter knows the difference between a function name and a variable, and colors them accordingly.
The Theme
Tokyo Night. Obviously. The color palette is balanced enough for 10-hour sessions without eye strain, and the contrast ratio is perfect for my matte display.
Why Not VS Code?
VS Code is a great editor. But it’s built for the mouse. Every action involves clicking, dragging, or navigating menus. In Neovim, I can:
- Delete a word:
dw - Change inside quotes:
ci" - Jump to any line:
{number}G - Search and replace in the whole file:
:%s/old/new/g
These aren’t shortcuts to memorize — they’re a language. d is delete. w is word. d + w = delete word. Once you learn the grammar, you can express any edit as a sentence.
The Catch
The learning curve is vertical. I spent my first two weeks being slower than I ever was in VS Code. But after a month, I crossed the efficiency threshold — and I’ve never looked back.
Your editor should feel like an extension of thought. For me, that’s Neovim.
:wq