91–100 of 321 posts
I have not tried the editor itself, but one thing that puts me off is how some people are claiming its going to replace vim/nevoim and others by the virtue of its great LSP and tree sitter support. I am working as a full time developer for the last 4-5 years and I never needed to use auto complete (for long words C-x n is there) and the current syntax highlighting seems fine. Vim is working great for me and I don't f…
I fully expect Helix to replace Vim, Neovim, and Kakoune for most users in the long run. Helix is built from the ground up around Tree-Sitter and LSP. This means you get the best syntax highlighting available, and IDE-like functionality, with zero configuration required other than installing the appropriate language server. Those are by far the most important features for a text editor to have, and crucially, they ar…
I feel like I am definitely not in the "most users" group here.
> syntax highlighting ... IDE-like functionality
> Those are by far the most important features for a text editor to have.
The most important features for me are the ability to navigate around and manipulate whatever's in the buffer(s) efficiently. I'm a 30 year vi/elvis/vim user and ... I'm not going to be able to use this. The deviations from vim's keybindings are much too widespread and tbh I find improved syntax highlighting and (especially) IDE-like functionality significantly too weak a draw to invest any effort in learning the Helix way - only to context switch between local Helix and remote vi(m) throughout my day anyway.
I tried, really I did. Opened up a file I'm actively working on. First thing I needed was `dd` and to my horror it didn't delete a line, but two characters. Turns out vim's `x` is Helix's `d` - except not quite; `5d` doesn't do what `5x` did, in fact the 5 does ... nothing?
OK fine, well, I regularly use `V` to highlight groups lines and delete those (or pipe them through my equalprg, or `:'!`) so I tried that ... nope. Though imagine my surprise when I tried `5x` and it highlighted 5 lines. Why didn't 5 apply to `d` but did to `x`?
I tried `:r!` but alas, no `:r` and in fact no `:!`. All these examples are things I do tons of times every day. So I read the "Migrating from vim"[0] document really hoping there was a "activate vim compatibility mode" thing but instead all I saw were the new sequences I'd need to learn, especially ones which require more keypresses such as:
go to line first non-blank character:
vim: ^
helix: gs
vim: $
helix: gl
vim: D
helix: vgld or td
So many showstoppers for me, which is a shame. Perhaps I could configure the hell out of it - going against what many other folk are proclaiming as sensible, sane defaults - but then I'm back to where I came in. All the effort to make it be like vim except with some syntax stuff I don't really need... no sale.
[0] https://github.com/helix-editor/helix/wiki/Migrating-from-Vi...
Super cool to see another competitor in this space. There's no support for tabs, I really hope it's coming and they implement them in the same way vim does. So far the buffer/window implementation matches vim (as far as I can tell), so I really hope the tab implementation matches as well. If they could implement the client/server architecture of kakoune, then this would really best editor (for me). It's a shame each…
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>Those are by far the most important features for a text editor to have I'd say that those features are useful for source code editing, not text in general.
LSP goes far beyond source code. It also covers an increasing number of markup and configuration languages, and there are even language servers for prose that perform grammar checking and offer style suggestions.
I like to be able to type "ps" and see one process for my editing session (with a low VM footprint in the low double digit megabytes at most, which had a startup time in the low hundreds of milliseconds.)
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He very explicitly stated what about the post was off-putting to him. You made a comment about being personally attacked while repeating the tool is better without any argument whatsoever. You're exactly proving the point of the comment.
And the part that they listed as "off-putting" was a very tame and popular sentiment, to the point that it's off-putting itself (or at least bizarre) to be "off-put" by it.
Not to mention that the whole comment is based on a bizarro claim amounting to "who needs LSP/treesitter anyway" and how they can't see the point of those (probably the most requested features from any new editor), since he "never uses autocomplete".
Still, "I can't see the point for feature X" and "I never use X" are totally fine. But saying that people saying they appreciate them and consider them important is "off-putting"?
I fully expect Helix to replace Vim, Neovim, and Kakoune for most users in the long run. Helix is built from the ground up around Tree-Sitter and LSP. This means you get the best syntax highlighting available, and IDE-like functionality, with zero configuration required other than installing the appropriate language server. Those are by far the most important features for a text editor to have, and crucially, they ar…
In software engineering, the proliferation of OSS is at the heart of what makes this craft great. Many passionate people create and recreate tools for the same “job”. All this happens with strong pressure towards public, inclusive and open communities around them. The fact that the method and medium require the same general skills means we can think very deeply about tool choice.
I fully expect Helix to replace Vim, Neovim, and Kakoune for most users in the long run. Helix is built from the ground up around Tree-Sitter and LSP. This means you get the best syntax highlighting available, and IDE-like functionality, with zero configuration required other than installing the appropriate language server. Those are by far the most important features for a text editor to have, and crucially, they ar…
> Those are by far the most important features for a text editor to have The most important feature of an IDE is to be easy to use, having powerful functionalities is important too, but that's goes after.. VSCode has nailed the first point. Wake me up when (neo)vim/kakoune/Helix has a "list of tab view" similar to VSCode..
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No, they stated that they personally have no interest in using better tools (lsp, autocomplete etc).
He is saying that these tools aren't improving his dev process and therefore are not better for him. Better is also such a subjective feeling - please either quantify the improvement or don't present it as an objective truth.
That would just be a personal preference thing, and it would be fine if they just stated that and left it at that.
But they also mention how they are "put off" (wtf) from people who claim that the LSP/tree-sitter support makes this a viable candidate to replace vim/neovim.
Saying you're being "put off" by what others use, is no longer a "this is what works for me" claim. In this context, the "I never needed to use autocomplete" sounds like some ill-conceived bragging point.
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No, they stated that they personally have no interest in using better tools (lsp, autocomplete etc).
No, they contextualized that these improvements aren't actually improving anything for them, as they're not actually interested in using these features. And thus, it's no longer a better tool for them .
Super cool to see another competitor in this space. There's no support for tabs, I really hope it's coming and they implement them in the same way vim does. So far the buffer/window implementation matches vim (as far as I can tell), so I really hope the tab implementation matches as well. If they could implement the client/server architecture of kakoune, then this would really best editor (for me). It's a shame each…
Tabs should be implemented by an external tool, like Tmux or whatever. This is how Kakoune does it.
Helix doesn't have that functionality. Kakoune also doesn't have splits at all where as Helix does, so the design philosophy is different between the editors.
Personally, I would prefer if tabs were first class citizens in the editor, but would make do with scuffed tabs if there was a server/client model implemented.