As someone who's used Vim/Neovim1 for about 20 years, it feels weird to advocate for something non-Vim, but here we are. For some time, I've used Jetbrains editors2 for anything heavier than editing remote config files or short scripts.
This is the first of a series where I will compare and contrast IntelliJ and Neovim.
First up: yak shaving. IntelliJ solves or greatly simplifies a lot of the small, unpleasant, time-sucking tasks that you don't want to do.
Trading money for time
Vim is well-architected, flexible, programmable, and extensively documented. It can do more or less anything. The problem is can, which is very different than already does. Jetbrains has done the work already.
I love solving problems. Fun problems include "I want to finish my video game" or "I need to import that data into my database" or "let's work on this fun puzzle".
Here are some problems I don't want to solve:
- Getting my editor to talk to my compiler, build tool, VCS, web browser...
- Getting my editor plugins to talk to each other
- Poring over documentation that's useless outside of one specific plugin
- Thinking of names for things or locations for things that I don't care about
- Debugging configuration file syntax/compiler errors
Someone at Jetbrains was happy to do or help you avoid doing all of that, in exchange for money, which is a pretty sweet deal. I'll gladly trade money for time any chance I can get.
Example: Running Tasks
It's awfully nice to be able to run tasks from your editor; tests, compilers, db migrations, deployment scripts, whatever. IntelliJ has a nice system for running tasks (which it calls " Configurations" for some reason).
It consists of a single dialog window that includes every build tool I can think of, and many I've never heard of. It's brain-dead to set one up. Fill in the boxes. Hit a key to run it. Output goes into the output panel.
How do you set this up in Neovim? You could go find a plugin. I tried a couple recently; one
was overseer.nvim. The documentation is great, as Vim
docs tend to be. But it's a lot. You're going to need to learn some terms: template, module,
template provider, action, component, task. Assuming you remember how to work your plugin
manager, you simply need to get it installed, read the documentation, and then carefully construct a
Lua table in your Neovim config files to represent your task. It's somewhat worrying when your task
plugin
needs
a tutorial.
I'm not an idiot. I can get this working. But it has the potential to devour time. There are so
many ways for this to go wrong, and then you're debugging Lua. Hope you don't typo a table key or
option name or function call. Hope you can learn to love seeing
error: table expected, got function.
"Just write some shell scripts", you might say. Sure. Where do you save them? What do you name them? How do you invoke them from Vim — key mappings? Which keys? Where does the output go? None of this crap matters, but someone has to make those decisions. Programming is tiring enough. This is how we get decision fatigue. These things accumulate and turn fun projects into slogs.
Flexibility that I don't want
You're trading some convenience for flexibility. IntelliJ's Configuration system can't do everything that Neovim can do. It does what Jetbrains thought you might need but nothing more, and it's not super easy to extend it to do more than that. IntelliJ plugins are in Kotlin or Java, much more friction than a few lines of Vimscript or Lua.
So in Neovim maybe you could get your task runner to display in your statusline. You could pick
some cool icons from your Nerdfont for it. Maybe it could pop up a
modal when it's done running. Maybe it could populate quickfix. Maybe you could display tasks as a
menu in telescope.nvim or your picker of choice.
That's great if run tasks, to the max! is the problem you want to solve. If it is, then that's OK; now you're living in the Land of Editor Configuration as a Hobby. I've been there. I don't judge. Vim is fun to play with. But it's not a fun place to end up by mistake or against your will when you have stuff to get done.
Keeping up-to-date
Languages and language tools change over time, and someone at Jetbrains ensures that their editors are still able to talk to all of them. I can't imagine the mountain of special-case logic behind all of that.
Oh it looks like you're using Docker Compose v27 configs to install nodejs v1773-latest-Ω? They didn't have the frobulation flag yet. Better squiggly-line up a warning for that. — Webstorm, someday
Recently, Webstorm was able to work with TailwindCSS v4 almost immediately after release for me, and that's with v4 changing and breaking basically everything compared to v3. Same with Svelte 5. I had to do nothing.
Example: Language support / LSP
Language support in IntelliJ is amazing. I find myself thinking "Surely I can't run an SQL query from there" and turns out yes, I can. Autocomplete is smart. Syntax highlighting is smart. Refactoring is smart. It all works.
Installing LSP servers in Neovim sucks. Assuming you've already chosen and learned how to work a Neovim package manager, for every language you want to set up, you need to select an LSP server, install it, configure it, etc. It's not a good sign when you need a plugin to help you configure your other plugin.
Sometimes you need to ensure the version of your LSP server matches the version of your language. Sometimes you need to install a linter and debugger and formatter separately. Sometimes you don't know which ones to use even after reading their Github pages and 17 Reddit threads, so you have to try them all out and see. Sometimes your package manager or Neovim itself has had breaking changes since the last time you looked, and now you need to deal with that. Sometimes you think you did everything right and the LSP server simply doesn't start and then good luck.
Maybe you figured out that you should use mason.nvim. How long did that take you? How much information did you acquire along the way that's entirely useless outside of setting up LSP in Neovim?
You only have to do it once in Neovim and then it's set up, as long as you never upgrade anything ever. What's even better than doing it once is doing it never.
Unified design
In IntelliJ, snippets (which IntelliJ confusingly calls "Live Templates") appear in my autocomplete menu after I create them, for the languages I chose from a dropdown list. I don't need to do anything for this to happen. I don't have to choose compatible plugins. I don't have to teach the autocomplete plugin and the snippet plugin to talk to each other. I don't need or want any flexibility here. Just put the snippets in the menu!
Neovim is a wobbly stack of plugins in a trench coat pretending to be an IDE. When someone asks what I did all weekend, I've never answered "Worked on my IntelliJ config"; oh how I wish I could say the same of Neovim. With Neovim that time is not spent thinking "Do I want auto-complete, or don't I?" It takes 10 seconds to decide you want it, and then an hour to get it all set up properly.
It's the difference between a tool made by one team with one vision, and something made my lots of people with their own styles and voices and goals. I've used Lazyvim and mini.nvim, and both go a long way toward a good IDE experience in Neovim. They're impressive, but they're also hobby projects; they aren't in the same league as some of what IntelliJ gives you.
In summary
Flexibility is good except when it's not. There's a lot to appreciate about yaks coming pre-shaved.