A bit of history for those who missed it.<p>Neovim was forked in revolt, because Bram, being a BDFL, was reluctant to “async” scripting, afair. Then in version 9 (or was it 8.x?) it still landed and neovim lost its main reason to exist. Talks about merging back were talked for a while. Now it’s functionally just a fork with different everything. I wouldn’t expect better software quality than vim, projects like vim are on another level.<p>Personally (opinion ahead), I find Vim a proven classic and neovim feels like yet another github project with a never-ending backlog for bells and whistles. Watching youtube videos on how it works with all these rainbow unicorn plugins makes me want to close it immediately. They made exactly <i>that</i> vim that Bram has foreseen and didn’t want it to evolve into, because it falls into the uncanny valley between an editor and an IDE. I believe vim mailing list should still have his message with concerns about that.
Neovim - modern and well maintained
flavor, great dev team behind it, healthy plugin ecosystem, many great features you won't find in vim. Plus everything vim has to offer.
I regularly switch back and forth between the two. I maintain a cross-compatible .vimrc to make those switches simple. I don't even alias, preferring to use either `vim` or `nvim` as appropriate. As a caveat, I generally don't turn it into an IDE. I like a more vanilla experience, and using TMUX to lean on the shell for most typical IDE functions.<p>If I could state a preference between the two:<p>Vanilla VIM: Installed on every server I touch, always available, works well even without configuration.<p>NeoVIM: Slightly better for mixed Clojure/ClojureScript projects (with Conjure plugin) that I'm often working on.
They're the same, just ecosystems. I "grew up" on vim, and I've used nvim in recent times, and there's no substantial difference imo. Mainly it's how they get setup, not how they get used.<p>Emacs, on the other hand...<p>Just kidding, I would never use that foul operating system.
Neovim.<p>* "Modern" codebase.
* General purpose scripting language (Lua, instead of Vimscript, which is a DSL).
* Greater (and mostly maintained) extension ecosystem.<p>Vim is nice on ssh'd servers.
Trying neovim has been on my TODO list for a while, but I never had an actual reason for it. What's better about it that will make me want to switch? I don't care about the fact that internally it's Lua instead of Vimscript: I'm not writing code in either. All that I can see is that I'm going to adapt to the differences, which is a downside.
I just use Vim. No reason to get Neovim when it's effectively the same for my usecase, just with extra steps. Vim is already installed anywhere and feels super light.<p>If I wanted a fancy editor, I would just use VSCode (which I do). Vim is best for lightweight and simple uses imo, plus ssh.
went from vim -> nvim -> VSCode + vim extension<p>I get to keep my motions and modes, get better support for normal IDE features, and a bunch of extras like being able to view images, pdfs, markdown
Neither. Stick with VScode unless you have a lot of free time and nothing better to do. Otherwise neovim if you're entering the ecosystem from scratch