Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Neovim VS pathogen.vim

Compare Neovim VS pathogen.vim and see what are their differences

Neovim logo Neovim

Vim's rebirth for the 21st century

pathogen.vim logo pathogen.vim

pathogen.vim: manage your runtimepath. Contribute to tpope/vim-pathogen development by creating an account on GitHub.
  • Neovim Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-07-23
  • pathogen.vim Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-10-04

Neovim features and specs

  • Extensibility
    Neovim is designed to be highly extensible with a robust API that allows for the development of custom plugins, making it easy to tailor the editor to individual workflows.
  • Asynchronous Plugins
    Support for asynchronous plugins enables smoother and faster performance by allowing tasks like linting and autocomplete to run in the background without freezing the editor.
  • Modern Codebase
    The refactored codebase improves maintainability and introduces new features more efficiently compared to the original Vim.
  • Compatibility
    Neovim maintains compatibility with existing Vim plugins and configuration, making it easier for users to transition from Vim.
  • Improved User Interface
    Neovim provides better support for modern terminal features, GUI interfaces, and offers features like an embedded terminal emulator.

Possible disadvantages of Neovim

  • Lack of Official GUI
    Neovim does not come with an official graphical user interface (GUI), which means users who prefer a graphical experience may need to rely on third-party options.
  • Smaller Community
    Although growing, Neovim’s community is smaller compared to Vim, which means fewer community-created resources and plugins.
  • Learning Curve
    New users might find Neovim’s highly customizable nature and reliance on configuration files challenging, especially if they are not familiar with Vim-type editors.
  • Potential Instability
    Frequent updates and changes can sometimes introduce bugs or instability, which may affect users who rely on a stable environment for their work.
  • Plugin Compatibility
    While most Vim plugins work, some could have compatibility issues or require modification to work with Neovim, necessitating additional effort from the user.

pathogen.vim features and specs

  • Ease of Use
    Pathogen.vim simplifies the management of Vim plugins by allowing users to easily install, update, and remove plugins without altering Vim's core files. It requires minimal configuration.
  • Directory Structure
    It promotes a cleaner directory structure where each plugin resides in its own directory under .vim/bundle, making it easier to locate and manage individual plugins.
  • Compatibility
    Being widely adopted and time-tested, pathogen.vim is compatible with a wide range of plugins. This ensures that users can confidently use popular Vim plugins alongside it.
  • No Impact on Startup Time
    Pathogen.vim is lightweight, which means it doesn't significantly affect Vim's startup time, preserving Vim's reputation for speed and efficiency.

Possible disadvantages of pathogen.vim

  • Limited Features
    Compared to modern plugin managers like vim-plug or Vundle, pathogen.vim offers limited features, lacking built-in update mechanisms for plugins or other advanced functionalities.
  • Manual Management of Dependencies
    Pathogen.vim requires users to manually manage plugin dependencies and updates, which can become cumbersome when dealing with a large number of plugins.
  • Exclusivity of Git for Installation
    Pathogen.vim relies heavily on Git for plugin installation, which might be a limitation for users who prefer or require alternative installation methods.

Neovim videos

What is Neovim, and why should you care?

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pathogen.vim videos

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Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Neovim and pathogen.vim)
Text Editors
93 93%
7% 7
IDE
100 100%
0% 0
Productivity
75 75%
25% 25
Software Development
94 94%
6% 6

User comments

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Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Neovim seems to be a lot more popular than pathogen.vim. While we know about 108 links to Neovim, we've tracked only 6 mentions of pathogen.vim. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Neovim mentions (108)

  • My Tech Stack in 2025
    PDE (Personalized Development Environment): Neovim. - Source: dev.to / 23 days ago
  • Optimizing My Dev Workflow in 2025
    I've used VSCode for years. It's great, no doubt. But when you have to juggle up to 5 projects daily, you'll find that it's going to block you away. Mine feels heavy, especially with multiple windows and extensions. This is why I decided to find an alternative, until I started using NeoVim instead. - Source: dev.to / 26 days ago
  • Setting Up Neovim for Automad Theme Development
    As the developer of the Automad flat-file content management system, I wanted to make working with Automad themes in Neovim as smooth as possible. Automad has its own templating syntax, so I created tree-sitter-automad to provide proper syntax highlighting. Since it’s not yet an official parser, you need to manually register it in Neovim. To speed up template writing, you can also add custom snippets using... - Source: dev.to / about 2 months ago
  • How to turn NEOVIM into an IDE-like code editor in NIXOS?
    Welcome to my optimized Laravel development setup featuring Nvim with LazyVim integration. This configuration is tailored to enhance productivity and streamline the development workflow for Laravel projects. - Source: dev.to / about 2 months ago
  • Dear (Rust) Devs: Article Request
    You want to customize your Neovim config but you don't know Lua. - Source: dev.to / 2 months ago
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pathogen.vim mentions (6)

  • Any Suggestions Apart from vscode for Terraform ?
    The person who mentored me the most when I was getting started with Terraform used VIM with pathogen but honestly this isn't a great idea unless you're really invested in a VIM workflow. Source: almost 2 years ago
  • Vim or Emacs?
    I am a bit confused. What has this anything to do with your original question? vim-pathogen is for Vim editor itself, not for PyCharm. I don't know much about MacOS, so not sure how to help. Did you try the installation steps at https://github.com/tpope/vim-pathogen ? Source: over 2 years ago
  • Usage of 'after/ftplugin' directory for filetype-specific configuration
    Back in the old(ish) days of Vim, usage of tpope/vim-pathogen to manipulate runtimepath was a popular way to install plugins. As it got update 9 days ago, it might be still used by some. Source: over 2 years ago
  • Vim: NERDTree
    To install any plugin using Pathogen plugin manager, you need to configure PAthogen in your vimrc if you have not done it already. You can find the installation docs on Pathogen.vim. After Pathogen has been configured in your vimrc, you can clone the git repository of that plugin into your local machine and then activate it using Pathogen. - Source: dev.to / over 3 years ago
  • Recommendations for "Standard, Modern Vim Config"?
    Bundles, Plugins, and Packages. Oh my! - Vim plugin management have gone through many "best practices". vim-pathogen, Vundle, vim-plug, and Vim 8's :packadd. At any given time I am certain the community would say one of these is "modern" or at the least some sort of standard. Source: almost 4 years ago
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What are some alternatives?

When comparing Neovim and pathogen.vim, you can also consider the following products

VS Code - Build and debug modern web and cloud applications, by Microsoft

Vim-Plug - :hibiscus: Minimalist Vim Plugin Manager. Contribute to junegunn/vim-plug development by creating an account on GitHub.

Vim - Highly configurable text editor built to enable efficient text editing

ale - Asynchronous Lint Engine

Sublime Text - Sublime Text is a sophisticated text editor for code, html and prose - any kind of text file. You'll love the slick user interface and extraordinary features. Fully customizable with macros, and syntax highlighting for most major languages.

Vim Awesome - Awesome Vim plugins from across the universe