Add to Chrome
Add to Edge
Add to Firefox
Add to Opera
Add to Brave
Add to SafariWhen comparing Neovim vs IntelliJ Rust, the Slant community recommends IntelliJ Rust for most people. In the question“What are the best editors/IDEs for Rust?” IntelliJ Rust is ranked 1st while Neovim is ranked 3rd.
Specs
Question Ranking
Pros
Pro Still Vim but with upgraded features and some issues fixed
NeoVim was a complete rewrite of Vim, with new features added and underlying issues resolved thanks to the Vim code base. The keybindings and configuration are the same as Vim, so the switch can be pretty simple.
Pro Better integration with external tools
The core text editor is "headless", meaning it's detached from the user-interface so other programs can hook into it. This enables better integration with IDEs and browsers, where "Vim mode" has typically been a poor substitute because it was a partial rewrite or a partial port at best. One of the advantages of Vim has always been ubiquity and Neovim makes it even more ubiquitous.
Pro Powerful plugin model
Vim plugins have always been useful, but tied to specific languages. Neovim's architecture provides better separation between plugins and the core product, so that plugins are completely flexible and can be written in any language.
Pro Built-in terminal emulator
This avoids the user having to make any installations.
Pro UI Agnostic
The core functionality is handled apart from the UI, meaning that Neovim can be embedded into any other GUI system, such as Atom.
Pro Async plugin execution
Pro Active development community
Pro Opens a 3Gig Text File in a few seconds
Not many editors can open such a large text file so quickly.
Pro Fast and light on memory usage
New neovim editor instance starts instantly and you can have multiple editors open at the same time, because id does not require a lot of memory to run.
Pro Easier to pick-up than ever
Don't believe it? Try typing vimtutor in your command line right now.
Pro Work in TUI (Text User Interface)
Neovim can work on terminal, on a remote server over ssh.
Pro Modern code base
As a refactor over Vim, Neovim has greatly improved its code base. For example, some functionality is handled by libuv, the same code base that powers Node.js.
Pro Comes with some good configurations out of the box
Some typical configurations most of VIM users make are default in Neovim.
Pro Even more powerful since 2019, because of additions such as vim-coc, TabNine, fzf, skim
Vim gets stronger every time command-line tools get stronger. This isn't even it's the final form.
Pro Config file is where it should be
I don't like having dotfiles or dotdirs in my homefolder unless they're needed. Configs should be in the .config dir in their respective folder.
Pro Built-in file-explorer and ability to make splits and edit multiple things simutaneously.
This makes editing multiple files at once, moving code around so easy.
Pro Treesitter and LSP
Pro Terminal mode is very convenient for testing code in a split window
Pro A fully featured IDE
Pro Constantly being updated
Pro Full power of IDEA engine
This plugin uses big part of Intellij IDEA features, including advanced code analysis and refactoring.
Pro Free/Libre (MIT)
Currently
Pro Many users
Has more users than the average plugin.
Pro The best VI shortcut plugin
For those that favor VI shortcuts, you can do nearly everything in IntelliJ that you would do in a VIM editor. Almost no conflicts out of the box, and those that are in conflict are easily resolved.
Pro Built-in user friendly terminal
Pro Has built-in Git support
Pro Nearly 100% of Rust code is interpretted by the IDE
The ability to trace variable definitions and references from within closures as well as understand smart pointers and macro code makes it the smoothest interface for writing Rust.
Pro Supports JS/TS frameworks
Cons
Con Poor feature discoverability
Con High effort to customize
A lot of time and effort is put in to make it specific to your needs.
Con Requires Brain Mode Switching
When editing in vim, you have you use the vim keys; when editing in every other window on your PC, or in Word or Excel or other application, you need to use the standard system key combinations. Learning the vim combinations can actually make you SLOWER at everything else.
Con Consume brain energy for editing that should be used for logic
Text editing in vim can be great once you've learned it, but it requires thinking about combination of commands. In other editors, you don't have to think about how to delete this part of code. You just think about how to implement a feature, what is a good design for this code. Even after you get used to using vim, it still requires your brain for editing.
Con Ambiguity in extensive documentation
Con Limited cross platform support
Neovim is not available for many legacy platforms
Con Split the VIM community
Moolenaar to be blamed for. If he opened up the development for vim to other bright minds, no fork would have happened. As it is mostly compatible with vim, it is not such a big issue.
Con Poor support for external tooling
Con Debugger requires paid CLion / IDEA Ultimate
Debugger still won't work without IDE that includes native debugger support. The only known is proprietary and paid CLion or IntelliJ IDEA Ultimate with the native debugger plugin.
Con Intellij Rust being replaced by paid for IDE
Con Why would you pay for it if there is VSCode
Con Too many issues (currently, in May 2022)
The plugin mostly works but it has a staggering number of issues (1400+ reported as of today). Therefore it should not be used if tool stability is an issue.
Con From the website: "work-in-progress, expect bugs and missing features"
Con Slow compared to Rust analyzer
Con Difficult to work with substrate
Con Does not parse macros correctly
It seems that autocomplete does not work for macros at all.
