My config for vscode is just like 5 lines to make keyboard travel between panes a bit more vim like, other than that I never needed to change much from defaults.
For neovim the work to make it ide-like is a large list of plugins and its integrations, large enough that I’m comfortable outsourcing the consistency to a distro (lazyvim).
With Lazyvim you get all at once. And you can ignore many plugins if you want,
Sure it's not ide level, but with proper configuration vim/Nvim is much more powerful than vscode. And thanks to Lazyvim, you can set it up faster
but Nvim or vim even without plugins can do many things that vscode can not do. So without plugins vscode is just an editor, while Nvim/vim are powerful utilities
I’m not arguing against that, I actually moved to neovim and I enjoy it - plus I can now stop worrying that my daily driver will be rug pulled.
I just don’t agree with the idea that neither nvim or eMacs have similar levels of ability to onboard new users. Not when grokking something as simple as closing a tab will get you through a history lesson on the alternate namings of tabs, buffers and windows for example.
Someone could make a config to make vim/emacs beginner friendly. But there’s a reason there’s no beginner friendly truck or plane.
But once you learn elisp, then you have the power of a full VM at your disposal and not wait for a plugins to exist and hopefully implement your workflow. And adhoc integration (like having ticket number in comments be clickable) is not easily feasible.
Yet, extending just about any functionality of Emacs for an experienced user is far simpler than in anything else - you can write some expressions in a scratch buffer and change the behavior of any command - built-in or third-party. Not only wouldn't you even have to restart anything - you wouldn't even need to save that code on the file system.
There's a strong correlation between perceived difficulty at the beginning and notable simplicity at later stages. Things that are seemingly harder to grok often open up avenues for clarity later. Conversely, things that seem easy to get into, later often become full of bottlenecks and complexity.
Imagine attempting to replace all the knobs, controls, buttons and switches in an Airbus A380 cockpit with a single touch-based display à la Tesla and claim it's now easier to train new pilots, but you've just made them dependent on a system they don't deeply understand, you've traded 6 months of training for a lifetime of brittle expertise.
I am forever indebted to my younger self for investing some time in understanding the grand ideas behind Vim and Emacs, and never, even once, have I regretted my choices. Rather the opposite - I regret wasting a big chunk of my life chasing popular trends aimed at "intuitive use", "easy start" and "it just works™". I would have never developed the true "hacker's mindset" without them.
Undeniably, there's an immense pedagogical value in tools that make it easy for beginners, but there's also a mental trap there. It's ingrained into human nature - the brain simply doesn't like the grit; it naturally gravitates toward comfort and minimal effort - it just wants to remain lazy. Yet there's a compounding effect of initial investment that pays off later. Sadly, we keep trying to find ways to dumb things down.
