That's one way it could play out, but that's not the way it did play out. Vim ate Neovim's lunch because they took so long to create a release that Vim was able to copy their best features. Worse yet, they did this in a way that is not compatible with Neovim. There is a chasm between Vim and Neovim that is growing, and the incentive to cross it is shrinking.

As someone who has watched closely Neovim's development since its announcement, and used it as my daily text editor for literal years, I feel sad to say that it is early-stage vapourware. They kicked vim into action, then vim kicked them out of it.

For me, I like:

- Neomake ( https://github.com/neomake/neomake ) which I use for async linting. I know this is now working in Vim 8, but I've been using Neovim for a while and this was exclusive for a while.

- Vim-test ( https://github.com/janko-m/vim-test ) uses `:term` for running your tests from within vim -- this is most useful because I have a shortcut to test from current editing file, etc. I know this is also possible in vim now.

- Mapping Meta keys in terminal -- opens up a bunch more shortcuts that weren't available before

- `inccommand` This I believe is only in neovim, and likely not enough for anyone to switch for

Cons: - Not in distros, gotta install manually via their PPA

:term to run a terminal in a vim window.

Also, much more sensible defaults.

Same here. Scrolled through it and the only thing I got is that there is a command called ":smile" which is not worth switching to me.

Doesn't mean there is none, it's just hard to find.