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..)"
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.