I’ve been using neovim for over a year now, and I’m very happy that I went through the initial difficulty of learning vim. One of the best perks of using neovim is that you can customize your entire editing experience and workflow. However, it can be a daunting experience to start with an empty configuration and set up everything from scratch.
I started with an empty vanilla vim config and slowly added the plugins as I went along. Videos by content creators such as ThePrimagen were also helpful in getting inspiration on which plugins I might like for my setup. But this might not be suitable for everyone. I was only editing yaml files and writing simple Python scripts at the time, whereas you might be looking for an IDE experience out of the box.
Recently I discovered kickstart.nvim by neovim core maintainer TJdeVries.
I decided to give it a try, and I was pleasantly surprised. It is a great starting setup for a beginner. It is simple and does not overwhelm you with thousands of features.
I’ve completely rewritten my config based on kickstart.nvim, and I am delighted with the result. Especially the LSP setup is very well thought out, and it works much better than the setup I came up with on my own.
TJ DeVries also made a video introducing kickstart.nvim and going through the initial setup.
I highly recommend kickstart.nvim if you are interested in using neovim and are looking for a sane place to start.