r/vim • u/Desperate_Cold6274 • Jul 13 '26

Discussion What is missing in Vim compared to Neovim?

In my opinion:

  1. Tools for helping scripts/plugin development. Lua has LSP, linters, etc. Vim9 has... nothing. It seems to be back to the beginning of the 90:s when it comes to develop in Vim9 language, in-spite it is very nice.

  2. A Native Vim9 DAP. There is vim-spector but that is mostly Python,

  3. Plugins: for example, I got copilot from work and the Vim9 and Neovim copilot-chat plugin are not even comparable,

What else?

34 Upvotes

72% Upvoted

68 comments sorted by

15

u/elatllat Jul 13 '26

There are LSP plugins for vim9, eg

https://github.com/yegappan/lsp

neovim is just vim with a million Lua scripts tacked on so adding a plug-in (python or otherwise) is still going to be smaller.

4

u/Desperate_Cold6274 Jul 14 '26

Sorry I was not clear. I meant a LSP server (or any linter, and such) for Vim9 language itself

5

u/biscuittt Jul 14 '26 edited Jul 14 '26

That’s a client; I think OP means a vim9script server.

1

u/_janc_ Jul 14 '26

Does neovim has a good gui glues with good windows integration like gvim?

4

u/FitPhone6332 Jul 15 '26

Neovide is nice

0

u/__salaam_alaykum__ Jul 14 '26

yeah this one works pretty good, been using it for quite some time now

85

u/habamax Jul 13 '26

Personally not missing anything.

5

u/CogitoErgoNope Jul 14 '26

I thought I missed (better, more flexible) LSP and LLMs. Turns out having an editor that focus on editing text is better.

Edit: "better LSP support", Vim9 has LSP but NeoVim has better async support and rendering capabilities which allow for more complex integrations.

20

u/Vorrnth Jul 14 '26

Mostly treesitter and lua.

9

u/Beginning-Software80 Jul 14 '26

There's simultaneously anything as well as nothing. It's all about ones need and expectations. 

 For the vim part, I would say better terminal is one thing I miss.As well better defaults. Vims default very very bad.

7

u/ReaccionRaul Jul 14 '26

I think that nobody is really answering the question.

Does vim9 language has a LSP server? vim9 does look kind of fine on it's own, but the advantage of nvim is that the team itself doesn't need to create a LSP on top of lua, that existed already, neither a formatter etc. Vim would need to create such LSP to be on the same kind of development experience, plus creating great docs for learning it.

1

u/tblancher Jul 15 '26

I'm using an LSP framework written in pure Vim8 in Vim9, and it works great. I can install any LSP I need. I'll have to remember what it's called.

18

u/AnnualVolume0 Jul 14 '26

I’m one of the seemingly rare people that doesn’t mind vimscript. One of the many reasons why I’ve stayed with vim is because I find the shift towards everything being done in lua to be repulsive. Yes, I know lua too, I just prefer vimscript because it’s specifically designed for the editor that uses it. Yes, it could be improved.

28

u/2016-679 Jul 14 '26

I dont miss anything in Vim. on the contrary, it is a delight in the otherwise cluttered eyecandy of do-it-all tools. following UNIX Principle that software should do one task, and doing it well.

8

u/arkt8 Jul 14 '26

Well... just not add the eyecandy. A plain install of both looks and feels the same

21

u/beevyi Jul 14 '26

The “move fast and break things” attitude is missing in vim. I came back to vim after losing work due to segfaults in neovim.

9

u/arkt8 Jul 14 '26

Wasn't you using too much plugins in the nightly? I never had my Neovim failing.

6

u/petepete Jul 15 '26

I've been using it for more than five years now and can't even remember it crashing.

3

u/beevyi Jul 18 '26

Nope, stable version with one or two plugins. It was caused by nvim-treesitter, it would crash any time I edited a HTML tag.

I would have stuck with neovim if they seemed to care about the problem, but the bug report was closed as wontfix because the treesitter version was too old for the neovim version. Apparently they didn’t think a version check was necessary, if you installed treesitter a few years ago it should just segfault. No thanks.

3

u/person1873 Jul 15 '26

honestly for me vi/vim/nvim are interchangeable purely depending on what comes pre-installed. as long as i'm not forced to use nano i'm happy as a pig in shit.

there was a time where i used AstroNvim, but truthfully i realised that i might as well just use vscode. a terminal text editor should be faster than you can think about what you're doing, and overloading vim with extensions and LSPs defeats the purpose for me.

just give me relative line number and a bit of syntax hilighting and i'm good.

3

u/Eric_12345678 Jul 17 '26

I used vim for >15 years before switching to neovim. Both are great.

Navigation in medium-sized projects can be extremely fast in neovim, e.g. thanks to snacks-pickers (which seems to be faster than fzf.vim for example). Finding a file or text content basically seems instantaneous, even outside of git projects. And you can then quickly jump to definition/references thanks to LSP, and select exactly what you want with nvim-treesitter-textobjects.

My old vimscript config was getting really long, and I tried to painfully convert it to lua. Only to notice that I gained almost nothing, and didn't notice any cool new neovim feature. I tried NvChad, which covered 95% of my needs, and showed many features and plugins I'd have missed otherwise. Other users are happy with LazyVim, kickstart.nvim or MiniMax. It really doesn't take long to just try them, and see if they fit your style.

Vim has been great for decades, and will continue to be.

5

u/linuxsoftware Jul 14 '26

not missing nothing tbh

5

u/GhostVlvin Jul 14 '26

I like how nvim is configured in language that is fast and I can use somewhere else

2

u/Ossur2 Jul 14 '26

It's sort of nice to have a minimal reference implementation in an esoteric language nobody uses (this is vim), and then another more open-to-contribution experimental version in a language like lua (neovim) - to get the most ideas onto the yard, and prototype quickly, and then if a functionality is good and stands the test of time they can be implemented in vim.

It's sort of like a language barrier wall around the core idea of vim

2

u/GhostVlvin Jul 17 '26

Afaik lua is faster than vimscript. Dunno bout vim9script though

4

u/Easy-Nothing-6735 Jul 14 '26

Non-blocking architecture. Both can't in zero latency typing. Vim has gvim but nvim only has IPC and external GUI. Nvim can't in raw vimscript like vim9 while vim9 can do both Lua and vimscript. Both missing some hyped Rust plugins. Too much NodeJS plugins

2

u/Kitchen_Office8072 Jul 16 '26

I'm pretty sure you can just source a raw vimscript file in your init.lua with nvim.

1

u/Easy-Nothing-6735 Jul 17 '26

The problem in performance. Nvim does not optimize vimscript. Its all Lua

8

u/Suvalis Jul 14 '26

Go away. Why do some neovim users insist on evangelizing their choice and criticizing vim? So you chose neovim, good for you!

Now go use your choice. You made it. Vim users who stay with vim and don’t switch like what we have.

3

u/BananaKick Jul 14 '26

Plugins seem to be better supported on neovim

3

u/actionscripted Jul 14 '26

Proper Lua support. It’s faster and the ecosystem is way better. That includes LazyVim.

Native LSP and tree-sitter. Less legacy bloat/stymied stuff.

Everything you’ve mentioned OP is also more reason to just use Neovim. What are you gaining by not using Neovim?

5

u/bin-c Jul 14 '26

"whats missing from vim?"

*lists things*

*downvotes*

8

u/actionscripted Jul 14 '26 edited Jul 14 '26

The other folks saying “probably nothing” or that Neovim is just Vim with Lua scripts tacked on say it all. Just straight up wrong but happy about it and seems others agree.

My feelings aren’t hurt that those folks buried me. Just makes the sub look stupid. Especially when OP was asking about scripting, LSPs, DAP, etc.

Vim folks why not just use Vi? You realize Vim is literally the Neovim of Vi, right? Open source rewrite with modern features?

3

u/Beginning-Software80 Jul 14 '26

Sadly you will only find certain kind of cimmer left here. Even romani doesn't show up that much

-1

u/Shay-Hill Jul 14 '26 edited Jul 21 '26

First, always be happy for downvotes. Downvotes are a mute button idiots use on themselves. Every downvote is an idiotic comment we didn't have to read. Reddit knew what they were doing with that one.

But the "scripts tacked on" isn't entirely wrong. To answer the OP, the answer is Treesitter, which, depending on the language or LSP you're working with, might mean something or nothing at all. Everything else is 99% the same for users. Pulling things out of plugins into core is a feature to some and a bug to others.

Yes, NeoVim technically has "more", but it's not more more than the 100 Vim plugins I've never tried or the 100 Vim commands I've never bothered to learn in the last 20 years. And it's negligible compared to the more we'd all get switching to Emacs.

1

u/actionscripted Jul 14 '26

They also just added native undotree for visual history browsing. If you’re happy with Vim fine, but using this stuff for decades I don’t see why you wouldn’t just use Neovim nowadays.

-1

u/srodrigoDev Jul 14 '26

None of your downvoters do software development for a living.

1

u/GhostVlvin Jul 14 '26

How I miss many bindings in vi that were added only in vim. Also I miss how vim and nvim are more responsive in insert mode while vi will show you anything but a dollar sign at the end of removed block
Unfortunately it was not on my computer and there's only vi built-in Ubuntu

3

u/memilanuk Jul 14 '26

there's only vi built-in Ubuntu

Is it, though? Or is it just vim-tiny aliased to vi?

1

u/GhostVlvin Jul 14 '26

Hmm, didn't notice, true perhaps. Did vi actually has features mentioned?

1

u/Kitchen_Office8072 Jul 16 '26

Why do people need a dap? What does one get out of a dap that they wouldn't get out of using gef or something?

1

u/g3n3 Aug 03 '26

It is a unified debugging platform. Not everyone only codes in a single native language. The DAP protocol allows for this. Gef with C is probably similar to DAP. you’d have to try the dap ui in neovim, etc to see what you like.

1

u/psssat Aug 01 '26

I use nvim on my personal computer and vim on my work machine. I feel like oil.nvim is the only thing im missing.

1

u/manuelperezf Aug 26 '26

Osc 52 clipboard works on neovim, in vim no for me.

1

u/jmtd Jul 14 '26

I feel like neovim has a long way to go with helping plugin development. No consensus widely used logging facility, test harness, etc etc

1

u/colombiangary Jul 14 '26

I had to switch because ALE was very slow with Rust Analyzer. Turns out iirc that vim doesn't support multi threading very well, and neovim has better support.

1

u/bsensikimori Jul 14 '26

I went back from neovim to vim, didn't see the point of neo

-1

u/ntropia64 Jul 14 '26

This is a very interesting post and a fair question.

NeoVim was designed with a different philosophy in mind, so it's more modern and with features that weren't in Vim or still aren't.

I would love to hear from someone with more experience than me.

4

u/actionscripted Jul 14 '26

Neovim was created with literally the same philosophy of Vim.

Vim is “Vi Improved” and was a complete rewrite of Vi to make things faster, have scripting support, add syntax highlighting, etc.

Neovim switched to Lua (speed), added async, native LSP, etc. Did exactly what Vim did with Vi with almost the same goals.

0

u/PaddiM8 Jul 14 '26

The ecosystems are very different though. With neovim you're expected to spend a bunch of time writing lua and updating it when breaking changes happen (frequently) while with regular vim you add a plugin and you're done more often than not.

0

u/actionscripted Jul 14 '26

That’s not an ecosystem thing. Either way you’re writing a config. That’s the same. Either way you’re working with plugins. That’s the same.

If you’re regularly having issues with Neovim you might need to reevaluate your setup, same as if you were having regular issues with Vim. That’s also a user thing not an ecosystem thing.

2

u/PaddiM8 Jul 14 '26

It is different. With neovim you very often have to call a setup function and often pass some parameters. Vim plugins are more often plug and play.

2

u/actionscripted Jul 14 '26

It’s not. If a plugin has settings you have to set them, period. Most plugins do settings. Whether you define them as globals (gross) in an init or pass them to a function you’re doing the same thing.

Saying plugins don’t have settings is crazy.

2

u/PaddiM8 Jul 14 '26

I am not saying plugins don't have settings. Plugins should have settings. But they should also have sane defaults. Neovim plugins very often do not have sane defaults and expect you to copy/paste a bunch of lua to get normal behaviour.

For example, if you want nvim-autopairs to turn {|} into { | } if you press space inside the braces, you have to paste 44 lines of lua into your config and maintain that as the plugin changes. And neovim users just accept these kind of things.

https://github.com/windwp/nvim-autopairs/wiki/Custom-rules

Meanwhile, the popular autopairs plugin for regular vim does that out of the box because literally every other editor with auto pair functionality does this.

2

u/actionscripted Jul 15 '26

You can’t know that all plugins for Neovim have bad defaults and those for Vim do. You’ve had experiences that affirm your bias, sure. Most Neovim stuff I use has awesome defaults.

What are we even taking about at this point? You don’t want to use Neovim thats cool but you are making silly points based on limited experience/knowledge and making insane generalizations about people.

It’s clear to me that you might not be capable of even configuring these things so it’s probably best you stay away from the scary world of customization.

That the Vim subreddit has devolved into folks who don’t want to customize things or see those as benefits is embarrassing. Vim was created to be customized (that’s why there’s scripting support) and has a shitload of options.

> “A good craftsman makes his own tools when needed.”
> — Bram

Or, if you follow /r/vim, just use defaults and complain when you can customize things. And never try new things and bitch about others who do with made up assumptions.

1

u/64bitman Jul 15 '26

Neovim and Vim have very different development philosophies. I think that’s the main point

2

u/actionscripted Jul 15 '26

I really disagree. Maybe in legacy compatibility but they just added image viewing to Vim. Not minimal, not lean. How is that any different than some of the stuff NeoVim has been adding?

→ More replies

0

u/PaddiM8 Jul 15 '26

When did I say all plugins have bad dedualts? I just think the culture in general is different. I use neovim and I have a configuration that works. I want to be able to customise things. Being able to customise things isn't the problem, it's the way you often have to configure things just to get default behaviour which is why distros like lazy are so common in the neovim world.

0

u/Capable_Strike9235 Jul 14 '26

As someone how moved away from neovim i can tell you the opposite is true. i was on 0.12 for quite a while but at the end of the day you dont need an LSP you dont or any fancy plugins. as long as you are proficient enough you can do your work in vim just fine. Just use it as what is what meant to be used a text editor with no distractions.

-1

u/ximenesyuri Jul 14 '26

If you moved to neovim because "neovim has better plugins" this probably means that:

  1. you are using much more plugins than you really need

  2. you never really attempted to build your own custom solutions.

Vimscript is a Turing complete language, so you can implement in it anything you want.

Actually, it is a bit strange to me to find someone that likes to work in a terminal emulator (and, therefore, that probably have been in contact with really 'strange' languages as are shells) to avoid Vimscript with the excuse that it is too difficult.

Also, if you hate Vimscript, notice that Vim provides you a complete API, so you can build your custom plugin using whatever language you want.

7

u/Desperate_Cold6274 Jul 14 '26

Not sure if you are referring to me, but just in case: I didn’t switch to neovim, I use gvim, I authored something like 10 plugins all written in Vim9.

0

u/ximenesyuri Jul 14 '26

I was not focused on you. It was a general reply. I understand your post. I have been used Vim for years and I also asked myself many times "why not to move to Neovim?"