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+---
+title: Thoughts on Neovim
+subtitle: Who even needs an IDE anyways?
+author: rose
+---
+
+## Why I'm using Neovim
+
+When I first started coding in high school and then later in early
+college I used to jump around between editors a lot more than I do today.
+I used Notepad++, then Visual Studio, briefly Netbeans, then Atom.
+
+But since settling into frontend web development I've stayed with VSCode
+for a very long time.  I liked it because it was straightforward to get
+started with, but versatile enough to extend for other languages.
+Between various jobs and projects I used it for Javascript, Java, C#,
+Rust, and C - and it did admirably at pretty much all of these.
+
+But about a year ago I saw that VSCode had a Neovim plugin, and I was
+intrigued.  I'd wanted to get more familiar with Vim beyond the basic
+hjkl navigation, and this seemed like a great way to do that! 
+
+So for the last year and change I've had the
+<a target="_blank" href="https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=asvetliakov.vscode-neovim">vscode-neovim</a> plugin
+plugin installed, and I've been really enjoying it!
+
+I quickly fell in love with visual block mode, or the "delete N words"
+commands.  They're just so handy I suddenly felt like they were missing
+if I needed to edit code any other way!
+
+But over the weekend I made the jump from using Neovim inside VSCode to
+using it more or less on its own.  I saw a video that mentioned the
+AstroNvim configuration framework and Neovide, and decided "yeah, I think
+I want to try that", and a few days later . . . here we are.
+
+## How is it going?
+
+Overall, surprisingly well.
+
+The AstroNvim config I'm using already had NeoTree set up which is
+very nice.  I've figured out how to get ESLint and Prettier configured
+for work, rust-analyzer installed for my own projects, I've been poking
+at themes over and over again, and honestly . . . I'm really liking this.
+
+Getting Neovide to connect to a VM over the network was relatively
+straightforward, I love how easy it is to drop my config into git and
+keep it synced between computers, and finally having proper mouse support
+(which I never could get sorted out with my terminal) is a pretty big
+game changer for when I'm just reading code.
+
+Also, I'd be lying if I said that I didn't love the smooth scrolling and
+cursor animation.  I am a simple girl after all.
+
+## Should you try replacing your IDE?
+
+That is a tricky question to answer.
+
+I was comfortable spending some time experimenting with this because I
+already had decent familiarity with Vim and had been using Neovim
+specifically for a while.  If you don't have any similar experience,
+the learning curve is going to be pretty steep.
+
+But hey - if you're looking for a challenge, you'll definitely learn
+a lot.
+