Moving to Neovim: My Lua Setup

1/15/2025

Just switched to Neovim last month, and like ThePrimeagen says - if your editor isn't blazingly fast, why even bother? Here's my setup after countless hours of config tweaking and Stack Overflow visits.

Why Neovim?

VSCode was fine, but I wanted something faster and more keyboard-driven. Plus, configuring everything in Lua is actually pretty fun once you get past the initial "wait, how do I quit this thing?" phase.

The Setup

First, here's how I've organized everything:

.
├── init.lua
├── lazy-lock.json
└── lua
    ├── core
    │   └── keymaps.lua
    ├── plugins
    │   ├── alpha.lua
    │   ├── auto-close.lua
    │   ├── catppuccin.lua
    │   ├── completions.lua
    │   ├── copilot.lua
    │   ├── git-stuff.lua
    │   ├── harpoon.lua
    │   ├── lsp-config.lua
    │   ├── telescope.lua
    │   ├── treesitter.lua
    └── vim-options.lua

Nothing fancy, just a clean split between core config and plugins. I learned the hard way that dumping everything into init.lua becomes a mess real quick.

The Good Stuff

Keybindings That Actually Make Sense

Got tired of typing :w a thousand times a day, so here's what I'm using:

Plugins I Can't Live Without

The Must-Haves

Telescope: Because life's too short to use find (This is god send for me Neotree is just too slow)
LSP: Makes my code look less awful before code review (I'm not a professional coder)
Treesitter: Syntax highlighting that doesn't break every five minutes (I'm not a professional coder)
Harpoon: Quick jumping between files I'm actually working on (Thanks Primeagen)

The Nice-to-Haves

Catppuccin: A color scheme that doesn't burn my eyes at 2 AM (Love the colors from this theme)
Auto-close: Because I'm too lazy to type closing brackets (Must need if you are moving from VSCode)
None-ls: Formats my code so I can blame the tool instead of my style (I didnot understand this one)

Plugin Management

Using Lazy.nvim because, well, it's fast and it just works. Here's a snippet:

The Pain Points

Let's be real, it wasn't all smooth sailing:

LSP setup is still a bit of a pain. Had to Google "how to setup tsserver" way too many times.
Muscle memory is hard. Kept hitting Ctrl+S and getting weird characters for the first week.
Explaining to coworkers why my editor looks like a terminal from 1976. (But the code reviews are amazing the faces are priceless)

What's Next

Still need to:

Figure out a better debug setup (I'm not using anything as of now)
Actually learn what half of Treesitter's features do
Stop tweaking my config during work hours

Try It Yourself

All my configs are on GitHub. Feel free to steal what works for you. Just remember: You can find all my Neovim configurations at https://github.com/tanishq5414/dotfiles

Start small
Don't copy configs you don't understand
Prepare to break everything at least once

I also have my ssh keys in my other repo feel free to use it :)

Happy coding!

Written by someone who still occasionally types :wq in VSCode out of habit

tagarwal.pro