One year ago I deleted VS Code. Here's the honest audit: what stuck, what I ripped out, and what I'd tell myself on day one.
What stuck
- Modal editing. I thought this was cosplay. It isn't. Three months in, moving by word and line feels like editing with oven mitts anywhere else.
- Telescope. Fuzzy finder over files, buffers, symbols, git history. This alone replaced half of VS Code for me.
- LSP. TypeScript, Go, Rust — all of it works. No compromises.
What I ripped out
Seventeen plugins. Status line frameworks. Dashboards. Animated cursors. Anything that made the editor a little slower than the one I was trying to leave.
The three plugins I couldn't live without
telescope.nvim— covered above.nvim-treesitter— syntax that's actually right, and the basis for every refactor.oil.nvim— edit your filesystem like a buffer.
One year inI'm faster. I'm not evangelizing. If you're happy in VS Code, stay there. This was the right trade for me.