Why hackers moved from VS Code to Neovim
3 hackers described this switch in public comments. Their words, with links to the originals.
What hackers said about the move
“This is the reason why I switched from VSCode to nvim (AstroNvim to be specific).”Ronsenshi, 2026-06-28original comment ↗
“When I switched to Neovim (with Telescope/jump lists), I moved from visual scanning to mental mapping.”barishnamazov, 2025-12-30original comment ↗
“Im glad i moved from vscode to neovim last year”tacker2000, 2025-12-27original comment ↗
Use VS Code? Get alerted when hackers criticize it.
Tell us the tools in your stack. When hackers start criticizing one of them, or moving to an alternative, you will hear about it first.
VS Code vs Neovim
| VS Code | Neovim | |
|---|---|---|
| Hackers who recommend | 8 | 10 |
| Hackers who criticize | 14 | 2 |
| Moved away from it | 15 | 3 |
| Moved to it | 6 | 10 |
Counts are distinct hackers in the sampled comments, not market share.
Criticism of VS Code
“personally switched from VS Code to herdr (with some custom plugins), and couldn't be happier.”falcor84, 2026-10-29original comment ↗
“Recently ditched VSCODE completely and switched from development on local machine to remote "vps" cloud.”throwaway888abc, 2026-06-05original comment ↗
“I switched from VSCode to Zed, which has a helix mode built-in and it works very well.”16bitvoid, 2026-05-13original comment ↗
“using vscodium instead of vscode is again justified.”RandyOrion, 2026-05-03original comment ↗
“Multi-cursor was the first plugin I installed when I moved from VSCode to Vim”worksonmine, 2026-03-07original comment ↗
Praise for Neovim
“on the whole it has been a good experience with Neovim.”Insanity, 2026-09-27original comment ↗
“and why I moved from Jetbrains Rider to Neovim, and so on.”nozzlegear, 2026-07-01original comment ↗
“I just switched from Doom Emacs to Neovim and my impression of Neovim has been much better.”royal__, 2026-06-15original comment ↗
“I switched from Cursor to Neovim and at first I hated Neovim’s poor AI ghost text.”goodoldneon, 2026-03-30original comment ↗
“neovim offered true color support in the terminal so I switched and stayed with neovim since.”shmerl, 2026-03-29original comment ↗