Setting up vim with IDE features takes an hour maximum + 2 minutes per additional language.
If that is too much for you, you could have used any of the various vim/nvim distributions with the features already there. You could have even used Doom Emacs with vim keys.
If you don't want to use vim, I do not mind whatsoever, but if you put in a bit of effort the solution to your problems would appear.
Sure, it's one hour if you did that already 20 times and you know the ecosystem.
An hour is barely enough to go through the vimtutor which itself is pretty basic (aka you won't get far with it, so you need to keep learning and practicing).
If you are a vim newbie, it takes a lot of time to figure out you need plugins, then figure out how to install plugins, then what's the difference between plugin installers, finding the needed plugins for your languages, getting familiar with each plugins commands, resolve any conflicts between them, then you need file pickers, debuggers, task launchers, snippets, split screens, multi tabs, etc... Even then, you only made things work once... Good luck figuring that out in one hour...
Then you'll need to keep the config working, practice and memorize the commands, movements, and maybe customize your workflow.
Configuring vim to replace your IDE may be worth it, but "set it up in one hour" is, in my experience, extremely unrealistic.
I think it takes at least one month to get into vim, let alone mastering any of the plugins, and afterwards you keep learning every day.
IMO this is not due to the difficulty of installing plugins (which is becoming easier and easier), but rather to embrace the vim "philosophy".
Many think that VSCode is better because easier to use and has more features. However I think this is because they don't use any advanced features of VSCode either, only the glaring obvious ones.
I am not talking about learning vim. Of course, that is a huge time investment and you have to make your own judgement if that is worth it (for me it absolutely was, but I was in University with few obligations and lots of time).
I am talking purely about going from a vim without IDE-like tooling to one including it. That can be done in an hour.
Still, IMO it can only be done in an hour if you've done it already... You need more time than that for finding the plugin candidates, evaluating them, installing the right plugins, then you need a test run where you lookup the key bindings, on vim it's not as easy to discover features as in a "GUI" IDE.
That's simply not the case because you will, very quickly, run into problems. One example I had with vim recently was that two different plugins both tried to format the same code and actually send each other into some sort of hell loop and crashed vim entirely because they called something in a circular fashion.
That's absolutely representative of the kind of errors vim and neovim configurations have, because it's all independent plugins with very little ability to fix weird interactions. As soon as you have to customize anything in a slightly non-expected way you have no chance to predict if this is gonna break one of the dozen things that are basically held together with duct tape. VsCode or anyting designed to be an actual IDE with its tools better integrated doesn't suffer from this.
You’re absolutely right that this can happen, but wrong that it is representative. Let’s take all the serious vim users in the world. How many have this kind of plugin hell experience? A tiny percentage.
Serious vim users don’t try to create a kitchen sink IDE. They start with a vanilla base and with their way up, including just the features that are important to them.
Starting with something like LazyVim is fine too. Then you get a rich set of plugins that have been configured for you. Lovely! And now just be thoughtful about what you later on top.
Yet half the (neo)vim people in this thread are yelling it's the One True IDE that can, in fact, do everything, and if you are using VSCode or IntelliJ or whatever then you must be a noob or too lazy to invest time in your tools.
"IDEs are easy mode and waste of resources. Its ok to start with them as a noob, but down the line i want to customize every part of my toolchain. (And thats just horrible to do in VSCode etc..)"
If that is too much for you, you could have used any of the various vim/nvim distributions with the features already there. You could have even used Doom Emacs with vim keys.
If you don't want to use vim, I do not mind whatsoever, but if you put in a bit of effort the solution to your problems would appear.