I've never tried neovim, but have been a vim user for over a decade and never really dealt with problems where I need to touch vimscript at all. Is neovim that clunky? Is it plugins?
If you are deeply involved in the community and are willing to put in the time, sure, you could probably build something superior to vscode. But the time invested to get there might not be worth the marginal productivity gains.
Most of the time invested has been invested by other people. My own nvim setup is just a curated list of other people suggestions. I haven't put a lot of research into it and I still find it easier/superior to use than some other editor/ide like vscode.