going from vscode to neovim

i've tried a couple times in the past to make the switch from gui text editors to the cli but it never seemed to stick, plainly for a few issues:

  • terminal emulators were slow, scrolling through large files was choppy
  • high learning curve kept productivity down for too long
  • overwhelmed by options in extensions & key combos

since i've got this m1 mbp point 1 is a non issue anymore, coupled with kitty using the terminal has felt like being sat in a tty, so lovely and smooth

points 1 & 2 are solvable, i just have to go about tackling taking on the switch a bit more methodically, rather than going cold turkey i'll trial it by working in personal projects first to get my speed on par to using vscode before fully committing

why switch?

  • way too much padding in vscode on a 13" mbp display
  • too many icons i never click
    • impossible to hide, even abusing customize UI custom css
  • vscode is one hungry hungry ram hippo, and that's a premium on this 8gig machine
  • ui isn't in keeping with the rest of the system - bleh
  • laptop speed makes it super nice to use the terminal because of speed
  • getting into making tuis recently so wanna sorta just live in terminals

main issue is that microsoft are slowly filling the vscode ui with padding/garbage that i never touch

new rice

i've also got some new rice going & would be super comfy to have a pretty terminal instead of a big ugly electron app to work in all day erry day

things i use all the time in vscode

  • mutli-cursors
    • add multi-cursors to end of all matching current selection
  • global search & replace
  • decent auto-complete with ts-server

extensions

  • bracket pair colourizer
  • auto rename tag
  • error lens
  • foam
  • prettier
  • tailwind intellisense
  • ts import sorter
  • todo tree
  • code time

will report back when i've setup my nvim with a config that covers these bases