From Vim Novice to Neovim Power User: A Six‑Year Journey

Background

The author first encountered Vim at age 16 after seeing a video of rapid terminal editing. The video sparked interest in modal editing, but the steep learning curve caused an early failure.

1. First exposure to Vim

Vim was already installed on the system. Initial attempts to open files or exit the editor failed, leading the author to search for "how to close Vim". The vimtutor tutorial provided the first exposure to basic motions ( h j k l) and insert modes ( i, I). Within a day the author could move the cursor and insert text, but struggled with remembering key combinations, the difference between insert and normal mode, and the default delete behavior that overwrites the unnamed register.

2. Attempt with a pre‑configured Neovim distribution

Five years later, while working as a professional software engineer using IntelliJ IDEA, the author felt limited by mouse‑driven workflows. A livestream showed a developer using Vim, prompting a trial of Neovim. The author downloaded the Astronvim distribution ( https://astronvim.com/ ) and obtained a fully‑featured Neovim setup with a file tree, fuzzy finder, and basic navigation.

In practice the configuration felt heavyweight and lacked IDE‑level features: no built‑in refactoring, limited "search recent files", missing automatic imports, and an unintuitive keymap that still required frequent use of hjkl. The performance and ergonomics were inferior to IntelliJ, leading to abandonment of the distribution.

3. Hybrid approach with IdeaVim

Instead of a full Neovim setup, the author installed the IdeaVim plugin inside IntelliJ IDEA. This provided Vim‑style navigation (e.g., gd for "go to definition", gr for "go to references", Shift+F6 for rename) while retaining the IDE’s language server protocol (LSP) support, code inspection, and refactoring tools. The hybrid workflow allowed gradual adaptation to modal editing without sacrificing productivity.

4. Full migration to raw Neovim

After two months of using Vim mode in IntelliJ, the author decided to build a custom Neovim configuration:

Learned Lua over a weekend to author init.lua.

Enabled Neovim’s built‑in LSP client for language‑specific features (diagnostics, go‑to‑definition, hover, rename).

Disabled the automatic completion popup; manual completion is triggered with <C‑Space>.

Integrated Telescope for fuzzy file, buffer, and symbol searching.

Applied the Gruvbox colorscheme for a low‑contrast UI.

Practised macros ( q register), registers for yank/delete, and the quick‑fix list for batch error navigation.

With this minimal yet powerful setup the author uninstalled IntelliJ, removed the subscription, and relied exclusively on Neovim for front‑end, mobile, and back‑end development.

5. Current usage

One year after the migration, the author uses Neovim daily, combined with tmux to create a terminal‑based IDE environment. Typing speed is reported at roughly 200 words per minute, and the modal workflow is considered faster than peers using traditional GUI editors. The author advocates the "Unix as IDE" philosophy and continues to refine the Neovim configuration.