My dev setup using VSCode and nvim

Back in January I made a post on how I was learning and configuring vim and neovim. After 10 months, during which I focused on University and didn’t write code 24/7, I found myself more and more going back to VSCode. So I decided to fine-tune VSCode to my likings, and simplify nvim to use it when I need to modify some files from the terminal.

In the last few months, I realized that in my 4 years of using VSCode I never customized it (aside changing theme) and I filled it with a lot of bloat. In this post I’m going to explain how I simplified and tuned both VSCode and nvim.

Why I decided to move back to VSCode

During these 10 months of learning vim and using nvim, I found myself constantly worrying about something wrong in my nvim setup. For example, I had issues with conflicting themes between my terminal (iTerm on macOS) and nvim, I had issues with the bufferline, I had issues with the neotree plugin, I had issues with the Option key, I couldn’t drag and drop, and some other minor things. Since starting with nvim, I have fixed a lot of problems, changed the setup a lot of times (even a full rewrite of it), and above all, lost a lot of time doing it.

Don’t get me wrong, I love nvim, tmux and being able to only use the keyboard, but I have to admit that a lot of these issues are not present in VSCode, while some of the pros are there. I don’t need the performance of the terminal on my computer, I don’t have strong feelings against VSCode, and I found myself more and more going back to it, just for the ease of use.

VSCode

Starting with VSCode, I began by scrolling through extensions and keeping the only ones that I’m actually using, knowing that I can always reinstall an extension with 30 seconds and a Wi-Fi network.

Then I simplified a lot the settings.json file, which was full of default options and deleted extensions, and added a couple of new settings.

Finally, I installed the vim plugin to be able to define and use my favourite vim keybindings, in the hope that this will ease my transition back to VSCode.

The final settings.json file can be found here.

Nvim

For the moment of writing, I’m currently not modifying my nvim installation because I want to try for some time the new VSCode settings. If I will simplify it, I will go back to this post and explain how I have done it.

I don’t want to preclude anything and I want to have both VSCode and nvim up and running, if I ever need them. One thing I know for sure is that by coding in VSCode I will miss tmux the most, so we will see where all this will get me and I will come back to nvim and tmux…