Editor Setup

Below are my recommended plugin managers and plugins for effective, lightweight programming setups with the text editors Neovim, Vim, VS Code, and Atom. For Neovim/Vim setups, also see Terminal Setup.

Neovim >=0.5 (Fast)

GitHub - neovim/neovim: Vim-fork focused on extensibility and usabilityGitHub

Repo with download instructions

Plugin Managers (Choose One)

GitHub - Shougo/dein.vim: :zap: Dark powered Vim/Neovim plugin managerGitHub

Fast plugin manager but not easy to install

GitHub - savq/paq-nvim: 🌚 Neovim package managerGitHub

Lua-based fast plugin manager but simplistic (lacks some features like lazy loading)

GitHub - wbthomason/packer.nvim: A use-package inspired plugin manager for Neovim. Uses native packages, supports Luarocks dependencies, written in Lua, allows for expressive configGitHub

Lua-based fairly fast plugin manager

Plugins

GitHub - nvim-treesitter/nvim-treesitter: Nvim Treesitter configurations and abstraction layerGitHub

Lua-based versatile and fast incremental language parser that builds and updates syntax trees in real time

GitHub - neovim/nvim-lspconfig: Quickstart configs for Nvim LSPGitHub

Lua-based fast and extensible LSP

GitHub - hrsh7th/nvim-compe: Auto completion Lua plugin for nvimGitHub

Lua-based fast autocompletion that pairs well with the LSP above

GitHub - Aryansh-S/fastdark.vim: A minimalistic One Dark color scheme for Neovim and Vim (use with Neovim Treesitter or Vim Polyglot)GitHub

Fast and simple One Dark color scheme with syntax highlighting

GitHub - lifepillar/vim-gruvbox8: A simplified and optimized Gruvbox colorscheme for VimGitHub

Fast Gruvbox color scheme with syntax highlighting

GitHub - mizlan/termbufm: Lightweight Terminal Buffer Manager for Neovim.GitHub

Fast and simple embedded terminal "compile and run" implementation, extensible to any language

GitHub - tpope/vim-commentary: commentary.vim: comment stuff outGitHub

Fast and simple commenting plugin

GitHub - JoosepAlviste/nvim-ts-context-commentstring: Neovim treesitter plugin for setting the commentstring based on the cursor location in a file.GitHub

Lua-based comment enhancer for the above plugin (you can make c/cpp use // instead).

GitHub - suy/vim-context-commentstring: Vim plugin that sets the value of ‘commentstring’ to a different value depending on the region of the file you are in.GitHub

Only get this if you specifically want to comment embedded Lua in Vim (useless if you just use init.lua)

GitHub - romainl/vim-cool: A very simple plugin that makes hlsearch more useful.GitHub

Fast and simple plugin that makes searching more manageable

Vim >=8 (Fast)

GitHub - vim/vim: The official Vim repositoryGitHub

Repo with download instructions

Plugin Managers (Choose One)

GitHub - Shougo/dein.vim: :zap: Dark powered Vim/Neovim plugin managerGitHub

Fast plugin manager but not easy to install

GitHub - junegunn/vim-plug: :hibiscus: Minimalist Vim Plugin ManagerGitHub

Somewhat fast plugin manager, easy to install

Plugins

GitHub - sheerun/vim-polyglot: A solid language pack for Vim.GitHub

Versatile language pack, fast but spacious

GitHub - Aryansh-S/fastdark.vim: A minimalistic One Dark color scheme for Neovim and Vim (use with Neovim Treesitter or Vim Polyglot)GitHub

Fast and simple One Dark color scheme with syntax highlighting

GitHub - lifepillar/vim-gruvbox8: A simplified and optimized Gruvbox colorscheme for VimGitHub

Fast Gruvbox color scheme with syntax highlighting

GitHub - mizlan/termbufm: Lightweight Terminal Buffer Manager for Neovim.GitHub

Fast and simple embedded terminal "compile and run" implementation, extensible to any language

GitHub - tpope/vim-commentary: commentary.vim: comment stuff outGitHub

Fast and simple commenting plugin

GitHub - romainl/vim-cool: A very simple plugin that makes hlsearch more useful.GitHub

Fast and simple plugin that makes searching more manageable

GitHub - neoclide/coc.nvim: Nodejs extension host for vim & neovim, load extensions like VSCode and host language servers.GitHub

Versatile but slow autocompletion and linting

VS Code (Medium)

https://code.visualstudio.com/code.visualstudio.com

Download page

Plugin Manager

Builtin

Plugins

https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/languages/cppcode.visualstudio.com

Full instructions for C++

Atom (Slow)

Sunsetting AtomThe GitHub Blog

Download page

Plugin Manager

Builtin

Plugins

GitHub - kriscross07/atom-gpp-compiler: An atom package that allows you to compile and run C++ and C within the editor.GitHub

C++-specific compile and run plugin

GitHub - AtomLinter/linter-gcc: Atom-linter extension to lint C/C++ source files using gcc/g++GitHub

C++ linter with diagnostic messages