Echasnovski is the creator of mini.nvim, as per the website:

“Library of 40+ independent Lua modules improving overall Neovim (version 0.9 and higher) experience with minimal effort.”

He’s also the creator of MiniMax:

“MiniMax is a collection of fully working self-contained Neovim configs. All of the them: Use mostly MINI to showcase its capabilities. Provide out of the box a stable, polished, and feature rich Neovim experience. Share minimal structure with potential to build upon. Contain extensively commented config files meant to be read.”

The interview is over 3 hours long, so it is split in 2. Part 2 is going to be released soon

Video:

https://youtu.be/ypJTkwarAVE

What’s the best way to support me?

https://linkarzu.com/about/#youre-a-fraud-why-do-you-ask-for-money-isnt-youtube-ads-enough

Timeline:

00:00:00 – Highlights

00:01:36 – How do we pronounce your name

00:04:23 – What do you do in the neovim community?

00:07:53 – Neovim 0.5 and the wild wild west of lua plugins

00:10:23 – We’ve been planning this interview for over 6 months

00:12:20 – Echasnovski’s ban on reddit

00:14:59 – Colorscheme theory (that I didn’t understand, not normie friendly)

00:22:10 – Color theory is very complex as everyone is different

00:23:30 – Gruvbox is for old people, highly saturated colors

00:27:15 – Echasnovski created the default Neovim colorscheme

00:27:38 – Justin Keyes also likes boring colors. Old soul trapped in a young body

00:29:17 – Is Justin a dictator?

00:32:18 – Why the reddit ban?

00:38:49 – long reddit posts go through mod’s approval

00:40:17 – How does the shadown ban work?

00:42:02 – Shoutout to Lukas Reineke

00:43:37 – Account restored by a misterious reddit employee

00:45:19 – Self hosting git server, codeberg, tangled.org

00:48:02 – Why planning on self hosting?

00:49:17 – Explaining the repo structure of mini.nvim

00:50:44 – You also have a picker? mini.pick

00:52:15 – Sylvan Franklin seems to use mini.pick

00:52:53 – Custom pickers?

00:54:03 – Issues with the matching of some pickers

00:56:18 – mini.pick has a frecency option? mini-visits (sounds like a prison conjugal visit)

00:59:30 – Thoughts on telescope?

01:01:00 – Why did you move from vim to neovim?

01:03:48 – Embarrassing experience with vim at work

01:05:32 – vscode neovim plugin

01:07:21 – Do you remember your first times using vim, was it tough?

01:10:38 – Thoughts on distros? What do you recommend to a beginner?

01:16:58 – What happened to lunarvim?

01:18:23 – Lazyvim distro or kickstart

01:19:38 – MiniMax demo

01:21:24 – Is MiniMax designed for complete beginners?

01:25:59 – mini.clue and why not which-key?

01:26:37 – Folke is always on vacation

01:29:11 – Did you copy Helix?

01:31:01 – The which-key hate continues

01:35:29 – Interview with Folke?

01:36:02 – The 30_mini.lua config file

01:39:21 – What if I want to use my own picker with MiniMax?

01:42:14 – Single config file for all plugins or a file per plugin?

01:44:21 – Echasnovski allegedly created the new neovim plugin manager vim.pack

01:48:10 – Should I wait for Neovim 0.12 before trying MiniMax?

01:52:22 – vim.pack doesn’t have a healthcheck because it’s perfect

01:52:54 – vim.pack demo

01:54:16 – Do you use any other plugins besides mini.nvim?