The editor war between Emacs and (Neo)Vim is far from ending soon. And this is great since this means both communities will be active for a long time, hopefully. But one thing that I noticed lately on Github or Reddit is that a slow and gradual cross-pollination is taking place, on the Neovim side. And as a Neovim user I am glad this is happening, since some features in Emacs are without any doubt amazing. There are more and more plugins which aim to reproduce those features, sometimes sticking strictly to the original, while other times improving them where is possible.
I myself continue to discover new possible integrations. Excluding the most famous Magit and Org Mode which are well known to the masses, there are some minor features that are still hidden in the shadow. I’ll bring as examples the two that I’m loving the most.
Compilation Mode
One of the hidden gems I recently discovered in Emacs is Compilation Mode, and I suggest checking it out since it completely changed my workflow.
It can be compared to :make, but you can run any shell command, and the output is redirected to a buffer where the errors are parsed for quick jumps. It’s more versatile
and powerful, since it can also be combined with the cmdwin. There is a Neovim implementation which I started to contribute to help refine the experience,
and I should say it’s already very solid and pleasantly close to the Emacs one.
Dired
Another underrated feature from Emacs is Dired, its built-in file manager. It looks like a simple directory listing, but it’s much more than that: you can rename, move, copy, delete, files directly in the buffer as if it were a text file. It feels natural once you get used to it, because you’re applying the same editing muscle memory you already use to manage your filesystem.
On the Neovim side, the closest equivalent that I’ve found is oil.nvim. Instead of giving you a separate file tree or pane, it lets you treat a directory as a buffer you can open, navigate, and edit just like code. It’s a brilliant idea that feels very much in the spirit of Dired, while also embracing Neovim’s modal editing strengths.