ar_lan specifically mentioned Neovim distributions. Examples would be LazyVim and AstroNvim. These are packages you can install that provide Neovim in a pre-configured and opinionated way. They generally come with language servers, linting, and various other features out of the box, and have their own paradigms for configuration.
They can be easier to get started with than just installing Neovim from scratch. But they add their own complexities. First, you have to know that they exist, and pick one. Then you have to know how to configure them, they may have their own nuances about how things are done. Under the hood they're using all the same packages, so you'll need to learn how to configure those as well if you don't want the defaults.
I would say the distributions to make it extremely easy to get started with a functional IDE experience with LSP features. But they're not without their own learning curve.
The problem is that I must make these distributions fit within my well established configuration, which is not as easy as installing them on top of a blank one.
Also it might be the fact that vim was never my main programming tool when IDEs were available for the programming task at hand. I debug as much as I write code, so having the debugger in the same context is important to me.
These things may all sound like excuses, but what I'm trying to convey is that vim can be a tool with which someone is proficient, but it's not the main one for writing code, and as soon as friction gets higher, it gets disregarded in favour of something else.
I think you're using asterisk, maybe *vim, and it's italicizing your text until the next *vim. You'd have to escape it with backslash.