I've been using the vim/nvim ecosystem for more than a year and I just love it. Using NVIM improved my workflow so much after I learned the basics of it and how to properly create a base configuration.
It's not so much hard to use despite the insanely amount of memes on Twitter. Please, stop with the exit vim joke is not funny anymore.
I'll write a post about some programming jokes that aged like milk.
Lua is love ♡ Direct link to this section
VIM comes with a config file, typically the .vimrc that is written in vimscript. Even though, is not that bad. I find it difficult to manually configure and the .vimrc file becomes so big if you add a lot of plugins to try.
NVIM uses Lua as an alternative to configuring nvim. It's a very easy programming language, you can learn the basics in a week and start using it with that, you can create a more organized structure to save your plugins and config files. Another advantage to using Lua is the community around it.
A lot of new plugins for nvim are written on Lua, making it faster than other languages like JavaScript.
Also, making my NVIM config modular helps a lot with the organization of everything.
Next, I'm gonna tell you what plugins I use the most.
Most Have Plugins Direct link to this section
This plugins are a must if you wanna improve you NVIM experience.
Telescope Direct link to this section
This is one of the plugins I use the most, one of the best fuzzy finders around here.
I like how fast it is and a lot of the options that you can configure with it. Search by file or by a regex expression with a nice UI and a lot of color-schemes are supported.
Try it: Telescope plugin
nvim-tree Direct link to this section
I see it as the NERDTree improved, very light and blazingly fast. You can use web-dev-icons. Extremely configurable but no overwhelming.
It's easy to learn all the keybindings, wanna add a new file? Just type a, edit? e, open? o. So simple and intuitive
Try it: nvim-tree plugin
nvim-tree-sitter Direct link to this section
Tree sitter it's a parser generator for our code in order to nvim can understand our code. This is very helpful because you can have a lot of cool features for your favorite programming language, like: syntax highlight, folding, text-object manipulation, etc.
The list of supported languages is huge and a lot of new features are being added to nvim.
Try it: nvim-tree-sitter plugin
Float Term Direct link to this section
This is one has increased my productivity a lot. Instead of open a new terminal somewhere else of changing between spaces I just open a new float term. Float term is just a terminal but... floating in your nvim space.
You can have a lot of float terms opened but one is just enough for me. The easy access is hot.
Try it: Float Term plugin
More plugins Direct link to this section
Those are my most "showy" plugins. I use a lot more but are just for tiny things like color colorizer, lsp config, color-schemes, etc. I strongly suggest that you vim config should be minimal as you can to get a faster start and use Lua instead of vimrc. This will make your life easier and happier.
If you wanna see all my nvim config you can check my repo nvim configuration
It's not that fancy so maybe you can understand everything there.
Well, that it! I know for sure that this plugins list will be changing over time but I will stay with the philosphy of less is more