> Being a lazy person, I never bothered looking up VS Code shortcuts. Because the learning curve for Helix is slightly steeper, you have to learn those shortcuts that make moving around feel so easy.
This doesn't make sense: if you were truly lazy, you wouldn't spend any effort learning a more complicated app, you'd simply not switch!
> with a few knobs for minor preferences. I am subject to choice paralysis, so making me configure an editor before I’ve even started editing is the best way to tank my productivity.
There are a couple of hundreds of options https://docs.helix-editor.com/editor.html and even more hundreds of keybinds https://docs.helix-editor.com/keymap.html to reconfigure, so you can knob yourself to death with Helix just like with any other configurable app. And the way out is the same as with vim - just pick someone else who has done it and has published the results before dying and use those!
> And the way out is the same as with vim - just pick someone else who has done it
I think the crucial thing here is that most people don't do it, because it works out of the box. You can change any of the keybindings and any of a few hundred settings if you want, but the defaults are good, so you don't have to. My helix config sets the theme and soft-wrap and that's about it.
In what way do vim default keybinds not work vs Helix's since they seem to be very similar (outside of the whole selection-first behavior inversion)?
In general, I agree that good defaults is the way to go, and vim is worse here (except for the theme, helix's default is bad), though again, the alternative isn't a many knobs paralysis, but a better starting set.
As a long time user of both Emacs (since 18.52) and Neovim and now Helix, I find your last assertion to be false. While it is true that there are many options (though not as many as either Emacs or Neovim), in Helix you cannot write code or install someone else's code to modify your editor. In the past I've spent a good amount of time trying out, integrating, and debugging various packages for Neovim and Emacs. In Helix I might try a new option setting, but the time involved is minuscule compared to what you might spend customizing other editors.
I use NeoVim, not Helix, but I think it's more about sane defaults then the amount of customization. Out of the box NeoVim is just a basic modal text editor and not much more. You have to dive in and start configuring to get the real power out of it.
Helix does a lot of the heavy lifting for you.
Also, as a side note, I feel like trying to use someone else's config in NeoVim is a path to madeness.
Ya, I found the author's justifications for decisions pretty unconvincing.
Of course VSCode keybindings aren't great, but there are excellent Vim keybindings for VSCode, and that's the only thing about Vim that really matters. There are even experimental Helix keybindings for VSCode, and that's the only thing about Helix that really matters. Everything else is just commodified IDE functionality, and VSCode does that best.
And sure, Microsoft is not the kind of company I want to be entirely reliant on. But VSCode is MIT-licensed. There are already tons of forks for various purposes. Switching from VSCode to Helix for this reason is sort of like switching from Chrome to Lynx because you don't like Google. Why not just use Chromium, or Brave? With the level of adoption and support for VSCode, you can bet on well-supported forks popping up the moment Microsoft does anything truly destructive with it.
I mean, if you just want to try out and learn Helix, that's great, but the usability and morality pretense is distracting.
Helix and other new editors (kakoune comes to mind) always appealed to me because they seemed to have slightly more intuitive approaches to editing than vim, but I just don't think I can ever switch, purely because vim just exists everywhere I need it. It (or vi) is installed on practically every system I ever touch by default, and almost every IDE/editor under the sun supports vim keybinds either natively or via well-maintained plugins.
It's the same problem with keyboard layouts: I'm sure I could learn to be slightly faster on dvorak/colemak, but nothing beats the convenience of always having guaranteed access to qwerty, everywhere I go.
> I'm sure I could learn to be slightly faster on dvorak/colemak, but nothing beats the convenience of always having guaranteed access to qwerty, everywhere I go.
Colemak/Dvorak is not about speed, but about comfort and avoiding RSI (though I would place the actual layout somewhere far down on the list, a proper ergonomic KB is top priority). Also, in my ~8 years on Colemak lack of access to it was a problem exactly 0 times. I don't type books on other people's computers, and if I would, typing blind on a keyboard I am not used to is anyway a hopeless endeavor.
I tried all manner of keyboards over the years, and in my opinion, none of them solve RSI. I'm now back to a standard qwerty for the same reason as OP - they're just immediately available everywhere.
What did help my no-longer-existent RSI was simple - I don't rest my wrists any more like I was taught in high school typing class (by an instructor that would whack our hands with a ruler if we were caught resting our wrists).
I do have a bit of De Quervain's Tenosynovitis from the mouse, but I'm solving that with one of those hand stretchers that hook to your fingers and provide resistance when opening the hand. 100 reps a day (25x4) and I haven't really felt it in weeks. Turns out that working out the muscles opposite to the ones you think is the key (therapy putty did nothing).
> typing blind on a keyboard I am not used to is anyway a hopeless endeavor.
Sounds like you’re a special case then. Most people can type fine on any qwerty keyboard. And your willingness to turn a blind eye to pretty major annoyances makes it seem like you’re trying to justify the effort you’ve put into Colemak. Even if you aren’t doing that, you’ll get more mileage out of just admitting that it’s annoying to have to use another keyboard.
And regarding availability, Colemak is now included in Windows 11, which makes it available out of the box in all 3 major OS's. Also, Colemak is an easy way to upgrade comfort in cases where you can't change the keyboard, like a laptop or shared computer.
Do you have any opinions on ergoKB? I've begun to notice some pain, not in my wrists, but in my upper forearms and am thinking about something to fix that.
> I'm sure I could learn to be slightly faster on dvorak/colemak
The speed is about the same. The big colmak win for me was that my hands/arms didn't ache after long typing sessions. Ergonomics and not getting repetitive motion injuries matter to me more than compatibility (though I can still type in qwerty even if it's slower these days).
This is what is keeping me from trying Helix in a serious way. I don't want to learn slightly distinct vi-like keybindings and mess up my muscle memory.
same -- I wish Helix would just have a full vi-compatible mode, it would probably be enough to get me to switch
the other thing for me is lack of the GitHub Copilot extension. I am far too used to having tab-complete. there's some effort for Helix extensions to handle this but it's not close to on-par last time I checked
> I'm sure I could learn to be slightly faster on dvorak/colemak
As near as I can tell, people generally type at similar speeds regardless of layout. If you're aiming for speed typing [1], I can see it making a difference, but chances are you're not going to see much of a difference. I type on an alpha-thumb layout (Hands Down Vibranium, the R key is under my left thumb) on an ergo keyboard. It's like using a fountain pen versus a cheap ballpoint or a nice mechanical keyboard vs a membrane keyboard. The experience is nicer but it's not a fundamentally different process. Being on a weird setup, I was concerned about "what if my keyboard breaks", "what if I'm on a public computer", etc and the solution is just to not forget qwerty. I use the laptop keyboard every other day or so for something short like a comment and it's fine.
What my personal setup does let me do is have my wrists in a neutral position with my arms resting on chair armrests and no active muscle effort. Between the efficient layout and small keyboard I never need to move my hands at all. This means that my wrists are just as well positioned after 12 hours as they are at the start and that's what has been letting my stress injuries recover.
It's a classic switching cost problem, to make it worth switching the effort either needs be below a threshold or the outcome has to be much better otherwise people won't switch - i.e. a killer feature/features.
I switched from Qwerty to Dvorak in my 20s, and now from Vim to Helix in my 30s. Both transitions were rough for a couple of weeks, but honestly less difficult than expected. Neither choice turned me into a 10x developer, but neither one has ever caused a problem that I cared about either.
Do you spend a lot of time on systems that you don't control? Dvorak discourages other people from helping themselves to my keyboard, which is honestly worth more to me than being able to go the opposite direction.
I bet you could learn to "switch" if you really cared to. Reminds me of the reverse-steering bicycle video from SmarterEveryDay. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MFzDaBzBlL0
I used vim for about one year before switching to kakoune.
Using vim motions in Intellij or just vim hasn't been a problem for me at all. I don't use very advanced shortcuts (the most complicated motions I ever use are ciw and the likes). Even though they are quite different (ciw is <alt>iwc in kakoune) I adjust to them quite easily. Kakoune has also helped me get better at using vim because there is quite some overlaps that are more discoverable in kakoune (<alt>i summons a clippy that shows all the different objects you can select)
I have to agree. It is too similar to vim, yet it is not vim.... I dont get what is the value proposition here. I mean I feel helix is just stripped off SpaceVim ????
But more importantly,it reflects the reality that although they bear some resemblance, the design logic of vi and Helix are actually fundamentally different.
> nothing beats the convenience of always having guaranteed access to qwerty, everywhere I go.
(less so for keyboard layout since it's harder to fix in other machines) but the ergonomics of your 99% use cases - using your own keyboard/your own editor config with 1% awkwardness when you can't copy a config beats the health-hazardous use 100% of the time.
> via well-maintained plugins
so those can read your vim config and maintain your better keybinds, right?
I was on sublime text for the last 12 years. I made the switch to helix and although I missed some features, it's been a great change. I never could get into the vim bindings, but helix's defaults are great and I don't need to go plugin hunting in order to make the editor functional.
There's missing features I really want, but they'll be added eventually. Git blame in line, some scripting support, better find-replace across a project and not just the opened buffers.
Just give it a try for a week or two straight. No using your other editors. Cold turkey. You'll be surprised at how quickly you'll relearn. It took me about three weeks using it full time to get decent. The first day or so were brutal.
This and to be honest no small amount of sunk cost are keeping me with NeoVim. I spent so much time learning how to get the damn thing to work the way I want I just can't bring myself to leave lol
I don't understand. VIM has a visual mode too if you want it. Just press `v`, do your selection and then operate on the selection. But frankly, the operator-motion is better, esp if you have repetitive editing to do. It is easier to repeat the same or combine the into a macro.
Eh. I've used a couple of different keyboard layouts and different keyboards and I can still use regular keyboards and layouts just fine.
It's just a matter of practice, which admittedly might be too much effort for little gain. I still use Neovim and I don't see myself ever using Helix or Kakoune.
As an Emacs user it annoys me to no end when I find myself using a system without a Vi variant. Not having Emacs available is fine, I know where to find it if I really need it, not having Dvorak is fine, hunt-and-peck is usually good enough; but not having Vi means I need to do a ton of sedding, catting, heading, and tailing which gets to be a chore after a while (almost as bad as using nano).
> I'm sure I could learn to be slightly faster on dvorak/colemak, but nothing beats the convenience of always having guaranteed access to qwerty, everywhere I go.
Citation needed. Of my 2 friends that have tried, neither have been able to reach their 'standard' typing speed after 1+ years of dvorak. Maybe they didn't try hard enough?
> Microsoft is also based in the USA, and the political climate over there makes me want to depend as little as possible on American tools. I know that’s a long, uphill battle, but we have to start somewhere.
I miss the days when we had militant, but more entertaining zealots like Stallman. Whatever else you can say about his antics, Stallman was comitted. And that craziness wrapped back around to being entertaining.
Now we just get whatever this is - basically the equivalent of someone declaring they're going to try being vegetarian by not eating the tips of chicken wings anymore. Like dude, fork Vscode and start hosting it on your own custom vc system that was hacked together as a side project.
Where's the fire and passion behind the resistance?
> Where's the fire and passion behind the resistance?
The working class are exhausted and a paycheck away from losing their homes. People don't have the time or energy to fight back for privacy/sovereignty/whatever inconveniences those in power. Stallman grew up privileged, went to the best universities at the best possible time and worked in academia. He had plenty of time to devote to political causes.
A majority of people in tech jobs have more than enough privilege to fight back, but instead they get cozy with their Microsoft editor, using the Microsoft backed LLM, pushing code to their Microsoft code forge, updating info on their Microsoft professional networking profile and publishing packages on Microsoft's package manager.
Let's face it-- the passion and resistance is nearly dead. There's a few of us left. Say what you want about Stallman, at least the man stood for something.
I used Helix for a couple of days and really liked it for the most part. However, I would sometimes encounter a small, simple thing that I do without thinking in VS Code but just did not know the command for in Helix. I would look it up, think, "Sweet, that's efficient" and move on. This kept happening and finally I was in a situation where I just needed to move fast and did not have time to investigate how to do it in Helix so I switched back and... never returned.
It was a learning curve issue for me, not a functionality issue. I'll probably return at some point (like when the EOY season becomes slower and I have more time to explore) but for now I'm back to cruising in VS Code.
I have a similar story but with neovim (and for the same reason as the author; growing unease with big tech). Tried and failed to make the switch a few times but made a concerted effort to stick with it throughout a specific project and now it’s second nature. I found it useful to research idiomatic (n)vim ways of doing things whenever I’d get frustrated or feel I’d be doing something more quickly in VSCode and commit them to memory by using new commands a few times over. Right now I’d say search/replace is the only thing that’s still not as ergonomic for me in vim as it is in Code. What I do is visually highlight my search phrase, hit asterisk then :%s//replaced - I learned that you can omit the search pattern using this technique.
Anyway nvim and helix are both amazing and terminal editors are both cool and sexy, so why wouldn’t you? ;)
Woah, how did I not know about that tip about omitting the search pattern? Love it and will be using that lots!
As a thank you, I'll leave you with the way I learned to search/replace, just to give you a slightly different flavour: asterisk, cgn ([c]hange [g]o [n]ext), type replaced, then . (period, to repeat) until I'm done.
Huh. I forgot about %s. I just search for a pattern and replace the first one manually. If there are fewer than ~5 occurrences, I'll just hit `n.` ~5 times and get them all. If there are more, I'll record a macro with `qqn.q`, then look at the occurence count in the bottom right corner (e.g. 50) and hit `50@q` to get them all. Sometimes the replacement text is non-constant, and this method allows for more flexibility with the recorded macro.
Sometimes it's funny to look around and see the strange local minimum of effort you've settled into.
I'm not sure I follow the argument being made here.
"I don't like vim as you need to install plugins to make it work"
"helix is a dumb editor, so it needs a language server."
Then they go and list the number of plugins they install. This seems to argue against what their main point
I now use VScode most of the time, however to me its a fancy VIM variant, because I'm so used to vim bindings.
I can and do use raw vim, although not for any serious programming recently. If I were then I'd have syntastic installed and possibly some more advanced linter.
However! If it makes them happy, then this is a good thing™.
The argument doesn't make sense, but I followed the exact same path. For me, Helix is genuinely just more enjoyable to use out of the box, so I felt more motivated to tune it to my liking.
I do almost all my development on JetBrains IDEs (Rust, Python, Kotlin). IME they are unmatched for giving you code insights and suggested fixes (combined with "click here to do that") out of the box. But they are absolute resource hogs and I don't trust that they (or their best features) will always remain free.
I've tried to get into neovim a few times. It's fine for basic editing and I use it a bit when I am ssh'd into a box without a graphical environment, or I'm just not bothered booting up a full IDE. But the UI still feels less intuitive to me than JetBrains, and by the time I've installed and configured the various plugins that should give me anything approaching JetBrains' functionality the whole setup feels very fragile, like it could break at any moment and I wouldn't easily be able to fix it. In the regard, Helix having more stuff OOTB feels like it could be a definite improvement.
25 years ago, naive me thought we'd eventually figure out how to use text editors as components within other applications like IDEs. A protocol would evolve to let IDEs and editors work together. The same protocol would allow every text box in a browser to be your favorite editor.
LSP is much more practical, but much less than I hoped for.
I've been using JetBrains IDEs for the last 11 years. Before that I used Emacs and Sublime Text. I've tried VSCode, Zed, and others. There's just no comparison on the code insights and code manipulation tools. LSP is far behind what JetBrains can do, although it's slowly catching up these days. I still use VSCode from time to time for other languages like Zig.
I've never experienced sluggishness, but, I also keep track of how much memory it's using and ensure I don't run low. It's clearly a huge resource hog, but I'm also glad for that. It's using all of my computers resources to analyze the code in amazing ways which help me develop fast. Emacs, Sublime Text, and others were all about typing speed. Fast development goes far beyond just typing speed.
I'm also on the jetbrains train, but I stopped using it for a while because they're sluggish. An editor's interface should never lock up, an editor should never have popups that demand focus, etc but both intellij and vs code do this.
At the moment I'm on VS Code again because Sublime Text isn't keeping up to date anymore (its ecosystem has mostly been dormant since 2014 or 2016) and Zed is still fully in development and doesn't have some of the extensions and tools that I sometimes use in VS Code.
If I were to go back to e.g. Java I'd probably use IntelliJ again, but then, the enterprise I work for would be shelling out for it.
I ended up switching to Zed after VS Code lost connection to my dev VM and locked up one too many times. I am not sure what the issue is- maybe the VM is just running out of memory and nuking the VSCode daemon? But either way, Zed has not had this problem at all.
I never had much problem with feeling VSCode was slow (outside of those lockups) but Zed surprised me by feeling actively fast. I do miss several extensions a lot though!
I had the same problem with pycharm, it was basically unusable on my Lenovo Yoga for anything more than text editing (so anything that actually makes pycharm interesting).
I don't know if it's just my hardware or some software issue, but I was very disappointed.
> But they are absolute resource hogs and I don't trust that they (or their best features) will always remain free.
I use quite a few of their IDEs for various use cases (Java, .NET, Python, Go, JS projects and some DB interaction) and ended up just buying their ultimate pack. For individual use, it was like 360 EUR with VAT per year that went down to 216 EUR by year 3 of staying subscribed. Just so I wouldn't have to deal with any artificial limitations and could use all of their tools instead of some Frankenstein setup where I have to install all sorts of plugins into IntelliJ.
Their AI tools are also pretty decent (Junie was lovely to use, despite the rate limits), the idea behind the free Fleet editor was also cool but it kinda sucked in comparison to VSC. That said, if the JetBrains IDEs ever get enshittified, I'm throwing them into the trash and moving over to just VSC with a frickload of plugins and AI slop coding to make up for the lack of comparably good refactoring tools and such. Until then, I'm okay with paying for their software, same as I pay for MobaXTerm and support FreeFileSync etc., I guess my point is that I largely view them as a commercial product and wouldn't count on that much being or remaining free.
Helix is great if you just want something fast that gets out of your way. If you want plugins and integrations and other magic, it's probably not for you. I used Vim for the past decade, because it fits the way my brain works. Helix captures that same spirit, but with some polish and friendliness that can only come from starting fresh, and abandoning years of entrenched design decisions.
Helix is a fantastic terminal-based editor. I would rather type in mittens than use a GUI editor. If that resonates with you, maybe give it a try. If you love your GUI, I don't think Helix will be the thing that changes your mind.
Readit News
This doesn't make sense: if you were truly lazy, you wouldn't spend any effort learning a more complicated app, you'd simply not switch!
> with a few knobs for minor preferences. I am subject to choice paralysis, so making me configure an editor before I’ve even started editing is the best way to tank my productivity.
There are a couple of hundreds of options https://docs.helix-editor.com/editor.html and even more hundreds of keybinds https://docs.helix-editor.com/keymap.html to reconfigure, so you can knob yourself to death with Helix just like with any other configurable app. And the way out is the same as with vim - just pick someone else who has done it and has published the results before dying and use those!
I think the crucial thing here is that most people don't do it, because it works out of the box. You can change any of the keybindings and any of a few hundred settings if you want, but the defaults are good, so you don't have to. My helix config sets the theme and soft-wrap and that's about it.
In general, I agree that good defaults is the way to go, and vim is worse here (except for the theme, helix's default is bad), though again, the alternative isn't a many knobs paralysis, but a better starting set.
> might try a new option setting
What about trying to change all the keybinds to suit your emacs/vim needs? What about tweaking hundreds of colors in editor theme?
> in Helix you cannot write code or install someone else's code to modify your editor.
But this is planned, so if only code tickles your fancy, then yeah, you'd have to wait for the full rabbit hole customization potential to appear.
Helix does a lot of the heavy lifting for you.
Also, as a side note, I feel like trying to use someone else's config in NeoVim is a path to madeness.
Of course VSCode keybindings aren't great, but there are excellent Vim keybindings for VSCode, and that's the only thing about Vim that really matters. There are even experimental Helix keybindings for VSCode, and that's the only thing about Helix that really matters. Everything else is just commodified IDE functionality, and VSCode does that best.
And sure, Microsoft is not the kind of company I want to be entirely reliant on. But VSCode is MIT-licensed. There are already tons of forks for various purposes. Switching from VSCode to Helix for this reason is sort of like switching from Chrome to Lynx because you don't like Google. Why not just use Chromium, or Brave? With the level of adoption and support for VSCode, you can bet on well-supported forks popping up the moment Microsoft does anything truly destructive with it.
I mean, if you just want to try out and learn Helix, that's great, but the usability and morality pretense is distracting.
It's the same problem with keyboard layouts: I'm sure I could learn to be slightly faster on dvorak/colemak, but nothing beats the convenience of always having guaranteed access to qwerty, everywhere I go.
Colemak/Dvorak is not about speed, but about comfort and avoiding RSI (though I would place the actual layout somewhere far down on the list, a proper ergonomic KB is top priority). Also, in my ~8 years on Colemak lack of access to it was a problem exactly 0 times. I don't type books on other people's computers, and if I would, typing blind on a keyboard I am not used to is anyway a hopeless endeavor.
I tried all manner of keyboards over the years, and in my opinion, none of them solve RSI. I'm now back to a standard qwerty for the same reason as OP - they're just immediately available everywhere.
What did help my no-longer-existent RSI was simple - I don't rest my wrists any more like I was taught in high school typing class (by an instructor that would whack our hands with a ruler if we were caught resting our wrists).
I do have a bit of De Quervain's Tenosynovitis from the mouse, but I'm solving that with one of those hand stretchers that hook to your fingers and provide resistance when opening the hand. 100 reps a day (25x4) and I haven't really felt it in weeks. Turns out that working out the muscles opposite to the ones you think is the key (therapy putty did nothing).
Sounds like you’re a special case then. Most people can type fine on any qwerty keyboard. And your willingness to turn a blind eye to pretty major annoyances makes it seem like you’re trying to justify the effort you’ve put into Colemak. Even if you aren’t doing that, you’ll get more mileage out of just admitting that it’s annoying to have to use another keyboard.
The speed is about the same. The big colmak win for me was that my hands/arms didn't ache after long typing sessions. Ergonomics and not getting repetitive motion injuries matter to me more than compatibility (though I can still type in qwerty even if it's slower these days).
the other thing for me is lack of the GitHub Copilot extension. I am far too used to having tab-complete. there's some effort for Helix extensions to handle this but it's not close to on-par last time I checked
As near as I can tell, people generally type at similar speeds regardless of layout. If you're aiming for speed typing [1], I can see it making a difference, but chances are you're not going to see much of a difference. I type on an alpha-thumb layout (Hands Down Vibranium, the R key is under my left thumb) on an ergo keyboard. It's like using a fountain pen versus a cheap ballpoint or a nice mechanical keyboard vs a membrane keyboard. The experience is nicer but it's not a fundamentally different process. Being on a weird setup, I was concerned about "what if my keyboard breaks", "what if I'm on a public computer", etc and the solution is just to not forget qwerty. I use the laptop keyboard every other day or so for something short like a comment and it's fine.
What my personal setup does let me do is have my wrists in a neutral position with my arms resting on chair armrests and no active muscle effort. Between the efficient layout and small keyboard I never need to move my hands at all. This means that my wrists are just as well positioned after 12 hours as they are at the start and that's what has been letting my stress injuries recover.
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/KeyboardLayouts/comments/1lfu1xt/fi...
Do you spend a lot of time on systems that you don't control? Dvorak discourages other people from helping themselves to my keyboard, which is honestly worth more to me than being able to go the opposite direction.
I bet you could learn to "switch" if you really cared to. Reminds me of the reverse-steering bicycle video from SmarterEveryDay. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MFzDaBzBlL0
Using vim motions in Intellij or just vim hasn't been a problem for me at all. I don't use very advanced shortcuts (the most complicated motions I ever use are ciw and the likes). Even though they are quite different (ciw is <alt>iwc in kakoune) I adjust to them quite easily. Kakoune has also helped me get better at using vim because there is quite some overlaps that are more discoverable in kakoune (<alt>i summons a clippy that shows all the different objects you can select)
But more importantly,it reflects the reality that although they bear some resemblance, the design logic of vi and Helix are actually fundamentally different.
(less so for keyboard layout since it's harder to fix in other machines) but the ergonomics of your 99% use cases - using your own keyboard/your own editor config with 1% awkwardness when you can't copy a config beats the health-hazardous use 100% of the time.
> via well-maintained plugins
so those can read your vim config and maintain your better keybinds, right?
There's missing features I really want, but they'll be added eventually. Git blame in line, some scripting support, better find-replace across a project and not just the opened buffers.
Just give it a try for a week or two straight. No using your other editors. Cold turkey. You'll be surprised at how quickly you'll relearn. It took me about three weeks using it full time to get decent. The first day or so were brutal.
[1] https://github.com/usagi-flow/evil-helix
Feel less efficient with Helix motions:
https://www.reddit.com/r/HelixEditor/comments/1h5qqg7/i_feel...
Deleted Comment
It's just a matter of practice, which admittedly might be too much effort for little gain. I still use Neovim and I don't see myself ever using Helix or Kakoune.
You haven't travelled far, obviously.
Citation needed. Of my 2 friends that have tried, neither have been able to reach their 'standard' typing speed after 1+ years of dvorak. Maybe they didn't try hard enough?
No, not needed.
This is not an HN comment posting a subjective opinion, not a scientific work that requires real, or a Wikipedia article that requires any citation.
I miss the days when we had militant, but more entertaining zealots like Stallman. Whatever else you can say about his antics, Stallman was comitted. And that craziness wrapped back around to being entertaining.
Now we just get whatever this is - basically the equivalent of someone declaring they're going to try being vegetarian by not eating the tips of chicken wings anymore. Like dude, fork Vscode and start hosting it on your own custom vc system that was hacked together as a side project.
Where's the fire and passion behind the resistance?
The working class are exhausted and a paycheck away from losing their homes. People don't have the time or energy to fight back for privacy/sovereignty/whatever inconveniences those in power. Stallman grew up privileged, went to the best universities at the best possible time and worked in academia. He had plenty of time to devote to political causes.
Let's face it-- the passion and resistance is nearly dead. There's a few of us left. Say what you want about Stallman, at least the man stood for something.
https://www.gnu.org/gnu/gnu-linux-faq.en.html
It was a learning curve issue for me, not a functionality issue. I'll probably return at some point (like when the EOY season becomes slower and I have more time to explore) but for now I'm back to cruising in VS Code.
Anyway nvim and helix are both amazing and terminal editors are both cool and sexy, so why wouldn’t you? ;)
As a thank you, I'll leave you with the way I learned to search/replace, just to give you a slightly different flavour: asterisk, cgn ([c]hange [g]o [n]ext), type replaced, then . (period, to repeat) until I'm done.
Sometimes it's funny to look around and see the strange local minimum of effort you've settled into.
"I don't like vim as you need to install plugins to make it work"
"helix is a dumb editor, so it needs a language server."
Then they go and list the number of plugins they install. This seems to argue against what their main point
I now use VScode most of the time, however to me its a fancy VIM variant, because I'm so used to vim bindings.
I can and do use raw vim, although not for any serious programming recently. If I were then I'd have syntastic installed and possibly some more advanced linter.
However! If it makes them happy, then this is a good thing™.
I've tried to get into neovim a few times. It's fine for basic editing and I use it a bit when I am ssh'd into a box without a graphical environment, or I'm just not bothered booting up a full IDE. But the UI still feels less intuitive to me than JetBrains, and by the time I've installed and configured the various plugins that should give me anything approaching JetBrains' functionality the whole setup feels very fragile, like it could break at any moment and I wouldn't easily be able to fix it. In the regard, Helix having more stuff OOTB feels like it could be a definite improvement.
LSP is much more practical, but much less than I hoped for.
I've never experienced sluggishness, but, I also keep track of how much memory it's using and ensure I don't run low. It's clearly a huge resource hog, but I'm also glad for that. It's using all of my computers resources to analyze the code in amazing ways which help me develop fast. Emacs, Sublime Text, and others were all about typing speed. Fast development goes far beyond just typing speed.
At the moment I'm on VS Code again because Sublime Text isn't keeping up to date anymore (its ecosystem has mostly been dormant since 2014 or 2016) and Zed is still fully in development and doesn't have some of the extensions and tools that I sometimes use in VS Code.
If I were to go back to e.g. Java I'd probably use IntelliJ again, but then, the enterprise I work for would be shelling out for it.
I never had much problem with feeling VSCode was slow (outside of those lockups) but Zed surprised me by feeling actively fast. I do miss several extensions a lot though!
Deleted Comment
I don't know if it's just my hardware or some software issue, but I was very disappointed.
I use quite a few of their IDEs for various use cases (Java, .NET, Python, Go, JS projects and some DB interaction) and ended up just buying their ultimate pack. For individual use, it was like 360 EUR with VAT per year that went down to 216 EUR by year 3 of staying subscribed. Just so I wouldn't have to deal with any artificial limitations and could use all of their tools instead of some Frankenstein setup where I have to install all sorts of plugins into IntelliJ.
Their AI tools are also pretty decent (Junie was lovely to use, despite the rate limits), the idea behind the free Fleet editor was also cool but it kinda sucked in comparison to VSC. That said, if the JetBrains IDEs ever get enshittified, I'm throwing them into the trash and moving over to just VSC with a frickload of plugins and AI slop coding to make up for the lack of comparably good refactoring tools and such. Until then, I'm okay with paying for their software, same as I pay for MobaXTerm and support FreeFileSync etc., I guess my point is that I largely view them as a commercial product and wouldn't count on that much being or remaining free.
I just hate the idea of opening two IDEs because my work repo is in Go and Python. Also, the IDEs are not getting faster, only slower.
Helix is a fantastic terminal-based editor. I would rather type in mittens than use a GUI editor. If that resonates with you, maybe give it a try. If you love your GUI, I don't think Helix will be the thing that changes your mind.