I usually tend to write about the tools that I use, whether it's programming, or writing for my blog. Well, this time, I guess it's a bit of both. As I'm now using Neovim for practically any task that involves writing text.
I've been using it at work, with a recent JavaScript project I've been working on, to write quick notes or todo lists, and I've also been using it recently to write blog posts.
Because of its extensibility, I've managed to adapt it to my own specific needs. I have some basic preferences that you'll have in most editors like themes, layouts, code highlighting, etc. But I've also got a fuzzy finder for files (and buffers), code highlighting/formatting, code completion, and even refactoring functionality.
I've only really scratched the surface so far, but I'm already finding it to be an amazing tool. Sure, there's a steep learning curve. I had to figure out what plug-ins I needed, learn how to configure them, learn [vim motions][vm], and also configure a bunch of key mappings for the specific functions that I want to access in certain contexts. (If you're interested, my Neovim config is on GitHub)
I've definitely learned that it's not a tool for everyone. Turns out not every developer wants to use or even cares about the command line. I got a few comments like "I just don't see the point" or "I'm too used to my mouse to use the terminal".
Maybe it isn't objectively better than an IDE for writing code, but it certainly feels better to me. Maybe it's the distraction-free way of working, or that the code is in its most primitive form. But, at least for now, it fits the way I want to work.
And like I said, I'm using it for all sorts of text now. Because if I'm spending most of my time writing code in Neovim, having another plain text todo list in another file is really handy. And once I found myself spending so much time in Neovim at work, when I got home, I started doing the same.
So, when I wanted to write a blog post recently, I decided to try and use Neovim for that. Because after all, my blog is just a collection of static Markdown files that I manage with git. Now, my process of writing a new blog post is to create a new text file, write the post in Neovim, and then use git to commit and push the changes. After that, my site regenerates automatically.
I don't know how deep I'll go with Neovim. I still expect any work I do in Java at work to be in IntelliJ, and I can't see myself using it for my apps either. But for everything else, I think this will be my editor of choice.
And as much as I am enjoying using it, I do find it rather funny that I have a powerful M1-powered MacBook Pro, running a nicely designed, modern operating system, and there I am, with a terminal running full screen and dealing with plain text files.
Next up on my list of things to learn, is tmux. I've seen a lot of people use it, and it feels like the logical next step. After that, I want to see if I can build out some of my own Neovim setup with a way to use text snippets, and to output dynamic data such as the curent date.
Now that I'm in this world, I would expect that I'm going to start writing about it a lot more. So you may start seeing the blog sway a bit more technical in the future.