The Editor War is Over. Neovim Won.

It’s 2025. If you are still waiting 10 seconds for your ID to open a generic React project, you are doing it wrong.

The promise of “speed” and “efficiency” has always been the carrot dangled by Vim users. But for years, the barrier to entry was simply too high. You had to learn Vimscript (a nightmare), manually manage plugin dependencies that broke every Tuesday, and sacrifice basic features like IntelliSense that VS Code gave you out of the box.

That era is gone.

Today, Neovim (driven by Lua) is not just “fast”. It is stable, beautiful, and arguably smarter than VS Code.

In this guide, I’m going to walk you through building a modern, high-performance IDE using Neovim. We aren’t just installing plugins; we are crafting a workflow.

Why Switch in 2025?

1. Speed: It opens instantly. It handles 50,000 line files instantly. It greps through your monorepo instantly.
2. Lua: No more Vimscript. Configuration is written in a real programming language you likely already understand.
3. LSP (Language Server Protocol): Neovim now uses the exact same technology as VS Code for auto-completion and error checking. It is built-in.
4. Treesitter: The syntax highlighting is actually better than VS Code because it parses the code’s AST (Abstract Syntax Tree) in real-time.

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1. Prerequisites: The Foundation

Before we install Neovim, we need the tools that power it.

# Ubuntu / Debian
sudo apt install build-essential git curl unzip ripgrep fd-find xclip

# MacOS (brew)
brew install neovim ripgrep fd node

Pro Tip: Use a fast terminal emulator. I recommend Alacritty or Kitty (GPU accelerated). It makes a massive difference in perceived latency.

2. Installing Neovim (The Right Way)

Do not use apt install neovim. The repositories are often years behind. We need version 0.10+.

# Installing the latest stable release via Bob (Neovim Version Manager)
cargo install bob-nvim
bob install stable
bob use stable

If you don’t use Rust/Cargo, you can download the AppImage directly from the Neovim GitHub Releases.

3. Package Management: lazy.nvim

Forget Plug, Packer, or Vundle. The standard in 2025 is lazy.nvim. It lazy-loads plugins (as the name implies), ensuring your startup time stays under 50ms.

Create your config folder:

mkdir -p ~/.config/nvim/lua/custom
touch ~/.config/nvim/init.lua

Add the lazy bootstrap code to init.lua:

-- ~/.config/nvim/init.lua
local lazypath = vim.fn.stdpath("data") .. "/lazy/lazy.nvim"
if not vim.loop.fs_stat(lazypath) then
  vim.fn.system({
    "git", "clone", "--filter=blob:none",
    "https://github.com/folke/lazy.nvim.git", "--branch=stable", lazypath,
  })
end
vim.opt.rtp:prepend(lazypath)

require("lazy").setup("custom.plugins")

4. Essential Plugins for Web Development

The Telescope (Fuzzy Finder)

This is your “Cmd+P”. It’s how you find files, grep text, and navigate buffers.

Treesitter (Better Highlighting)

Ensures your React components actually look like components, not just text.

LSP Zero (Zero Config IntelliSense)

Setting up LSP used to take 500 lines of code. With lsp-zero, it takes 10.

-- Example LSP Setup
local lsp = require('lsp-zero').preset({})

lsp.on_attach(function(client, bufnr)
  lsp.default_keymaps({buffer = bufnr})
end)

require('lspconfig').ts_ls.setup({}) -- TypeScript
require('lspconfig').astro.setup({}) -- Astro
require('lspconfig').tailwindcss.setup({}) -- Tailwind

lsp.setup()

5. My Personal Workflow

Here is how I actually work day-to-day:

1. Tmux: I split my terminal. Code on left (80%), Server logs on right (20%).
2. Harpoon: I don’t keep tabs open. I “Harpoon” the 4 files I’m working on and jump between them with Cmd+1, Cmd+2.
3. Lazygit: I never type git status. I press <leader>gg and interact with a full Git UI inside Neovim.

Conclusion

Switching to Neovim is an investment. You will be slower for 2 weeks. Then, you will be faster for the rest of your career.

If you want my exact configuration files (dotfiles), check out the GitHub repo linked in the footer.

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<FAQ items={[ { question: “Is Neovim hard to learn?”, answer: “The learning curve is steep initially (about 1-2 weeks), but modern starter kits like LazyVim make it much easier than it used to be.” }, { question: “Can I use VS Code plugins in Neovim?”, answer: “No, but Neovim almost certainly has an equivalent (often faster) plugin for whatever you are using in VS Code.” }, { question: “Does Neovim work on Windows?”, answer: “Yes, it works great on WSL2 or PowerShell, though the experience is generally smoothest on Linux or macOS.” } ]} />