Neovim genuinely makes me happy. I love it to bits.

I use VSCodium atm.

I left a comment before but I thought I’d address the concerns around modal editing. It’s not as hard as it seems, once you wrap your head around hjkl you’ll be fine.

Use Lazyvim to get started and install the vim plugin in vscode. Try it qutebrowser too you won’t look back honestly.

Consider helix too, it works out of the box but the keys are slightly different to Vim which makes it challenging for me.

I use Lapce, which could be a great native alternative to VS-Code (Also it’s built with Rust, this is for the Rustaceans)

There was a time where I used Geany as well, I still like it

I use emacs when on my personal machines. VS Code at work.

The fastest tool is the one you are best at using. I find that my tool doesn’t make me fast, my ability to solve issues makes me fast. I very rarely learn a new tool unless it accomplishes something for me my other tools do not.

For example, at work I use windows and regularly ssh to servers. My entire job is spent ssh’d into other servers. Emacs terminal emulator is spotty at best when using ssh on windows. There are ways to make it work, but some modifications get flagged by our SEIMs. So in that case I use vs code, and the ssh remote connection options and split terminal interface.

At home I use emacs. I have all Linux machines so my terminal plays nicely. I also am working on reducing my RSI from years of tech work. The less mousing I have to do, the better. Emacs allows me to keep my hands on my keyboard.

Neovim, Emacs, Helix and VSCode.

Zed has been fun.

VsCode and Pycharm are just too slow for me. You need a very fast machine with a lot of RAM.

I started with neovim because I hate my laptop’s mousepad, and that’s often pushed as a benefit of modal editors, not needing the mouse. After I used it for a while I found that not only could you do stuff easily that would be difficult in, say vs code, but it was also pretty fun. It’s honestly a bit of a power trip sometimes, makes me feel like a 90s tv hacker. Also plugins. So many neat plugins.

I used to use VSCodium, but in my quest to touch the mouse as little as possible I switched to Neovim.

I hate to be that guy but (neo)vim has served me well for too long. I don’t even use any crazy maps or plugins; it’s just comfy.

I’m still learning to code, but I tried out a bunch and I’ve liked using Vim, VScodium and Pycharm.

I swapped to neovim 10 months ago. Haven’t looked back. Actually, I’ve looked back a LOT for the first few weeks because I couldn’t figure out how to do certain things. But the more you learn the better it becomes. Not needing your mouse is SO good.

NeoVim plus tmux.

Great multi dimensional way of operating. You have access to the terminal and your ide.

It’s beautiful

vscode + whatever connection plugin you need + vim plugin

The main reason I like vi/vim is that if you’re having to use multiple different computers (such as if one is a sysadmin, or in my case, does scientific computing), because if you’re running on Linux, you can be confident that vi/vim will be on it.

For personal use, I’ve been using emacs, but I can’t recommend that without feeling like I’m suggesting you try some heroin. I enjoy emacs because of it’s complexity and how much power it gives me to modify it. It’s very easy to fall into feature creep and over complexity though. That’s why I can’t recommend it — it’s good for me because I am a chronic tinkerer, and having something to fuck around with is an outlet for that.

I would recommend learning the basics of vim though. As you highlight, getting back to your current level of productivity would take a while, even if you loved vim and committed to it wholeheartedly. It is possible to try it out with little commitment though, for the perspective. If you’re on a machine that has vim installed already, try the vimtutor command, which will start the ~30 min long inbuilt tutorial for vim. I liked it for giving me perspective on what on earth vim even was.

I know you don’t use it anymore, but I just want to fistbump you re: sublime text. I really loved that as a basic text editor that was, for me, just a slightly nicer notepad.

Not dev but I’m in IT/Cybersec mostly as it’s much easier to find jobs there and I use vim just about everywhere, usually with tmux and i3 with custom vim-like keybinds (super+j move focus right etc), I use vim even on my phone in termux, with gboard.

I don’t use LSPs cause CBA but I only use Python and C and maybe occasionally bash for homelab stuff and I don’t have large projects (😭).

If I’m doing any ML stuff from scratch (not refining or writing API for local llm model or integrating it with another API but just building classifiers etc) for fun I use Jupyter. Such a wildly different way of coding honestly ngl it’s wild, but great when you need to document what you’re doing.

At uni I used to use fucking Visual Studio with C# and Netbeans with Java, but I learned it pretty well. I don’t think they ever even taught us how to run code outside those 😂

At work I use gedit and gnome terminal for navigation cuz it’s company time unless I’m personally interested in what I’m doing.