> I always see people remark "wow look how snappy old computers were" when they're essentially built like $10,000 machines if you were to actually have those specs at that time.
But the question is that, if you were to spend $10,000 or more today will you experience the same snappiness.
I would argue that it's impossible to replicate the low-latency experience of "retro" systems today with the overhead of modern software; no matter how much you are willing to spend.
Anyone considering to switch should keep in mind that these are projects with very different philosophies.
Neovim is always chasing the shiny new things; while that's exiting it comes with breaking changes, general instability and the possibility of changes that you might not like.
Vim is the exact opposite. You can drop in a .vimrc from 20 years ago it will most likely work fine. It should be noted that this focus on stability does not necessarily constrain innovation (eg. vim9script), it just sets a conservative pace of improvements.