Difference between Vim and Neovim

“Whim” (Vim) and “Nevin” (Neovim) are two of the most popular terminal-based text editors. Neovim is a fork of Vim, created to refactor the codebase and encourage community contribution.

Key Differences

1. Configuration Language:

   • Vim: Uses Vimscript, an older, esoteric language.
   • Neovim: Has first-class support for Lua, which is much faster and easier for developers to write plugins in.

2. Asynchronous Architecture:

   • Neovim was built from the ground up to support asynchronous tasks (Job Control) earlier than Vim. This allows plugins (like linters) to run in the background without freezing the editor.

3. Defaults:

   • Neovim comes with “sane defaults” out of the box (e.g., usually has syntax highlighting and mouse support enabled by default), whereas Vim often requires a .vimrc to become usable.

4. LSP (Language Server Protocol):

   • Neovim has a built-in LSP client, making it extremely powerful as an IDE replacement (comparable to VS Code) with minimal setup. Vim requires external plugins for similar functionality.

Which one to choose?

For most modern development, Neovim is the preferred choice due to its ecosystem and Lua integration. Vim is respected for its ubiquity—it is installed on almost every Linux server by default.