Why Vim Still
After trying VS Code, Zed, and Cursor — I keep coming back to Neovim. Not because it's the "best" editor, but because the mental model of modal editing is burned into my muscle memory.
Core Plugins
My setup is intentionally minimal. Around 15 plugins total:
-- lazy.nvim plugin spec (excerpt)
{
"nvim-telescope/telescope.nvim",
dependencies = { "nvim-lua/plenary.nvim" },
keys = {
{ "<leader>ff", "<cmd>Telescope find_files<cr>" },
{ "<leader>fg", "<cmd>Telescope live_grep<cr>" },
}
}
Telescope handles file finding, grep, and buffer switching. It replaced fzf for me last year and I haven't looked back.
Key Bindings Philosophy
My rule: if I do something more than 5 times a day, it gets a 2-key binding.
Some favorites:
<leader>w— save<leader>q— quit buffer<leader>e— toggle file treegd— go to definition (LSP)gr— find references (LSP)
The Takeaway
Your editor doesn't matter nearly as much as understanding your codebase. But a well-tuned editor removes friction, and friction compounds.