Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Leaving Neovim for Zed

stevedylan.dev

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

201–210 of 331 posts

Re: Leaving Neovim for Zed

#201

Post by imjonse »

jdeaton wrote: post #134
Voklen wrote: post #109

For me this feels similar to why I use Helix[1]. I used to use VSCodium and had tried to switch to Vim or Neovim multiple times but didn't manage because of all the plugin configuration to be able to program. Then I saw an HN post about Helix, started it up and it just worked and so haven't used anything else since. I find the Helix keybindings easier to learn because you see what text will be affected by any operati…

Helix has been trying to implement a plugins system for like 2 years that should tell you everything you need to know about its future prospects

A plugin system is much less of an issue when Helix has built-in functionality for most of what comes as plugins in Vim. That said integration with git or with code assistants/chat is something that is probably better done via plugins hence it is still on the roadmap.

But in my experience of ~10 months of Helix vs +20 years of Vim, the former is a much more pleasant and hassle-free experience, mostly because of it offering autocompletion, matching, fuzzy file picker, multiple cursors, LSP and go to definition, and other features with no or minimal configuration and the guarantee of stability and support (something that can not always be said when picking among the competing Vim plugins for same)

Re: Leaving Neovim for Zed

#202

Post by imjonse »

_7tgr wrote: post #166
jdeaton wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Helix has been trying to implement a plugins system for like 2 years that should tell you everything you need to know about its future prospects

And, oddly, they chose to do their own Scheme implementation for it. Not that I'm against Scheme in particular, but a lot of other people justifiably seem to be. It doesn't have the speed or learn-it-in-10-minutes of Lua (nvim) or the historical excuse of Elisp/Vimscript (emacs/vim) or the ecosystem of Typescript (vscode). Strange choice.

They already have Scheme based config files and I'd say it is simpler that Lua.

Re: Leaving Neovim for Zed

#203

Post by MaysonL »

kstenerud wrote: post #191

> I was already a keyboard maximalist from previous jobs where I learned speed = productivity I've never understood this. In over 30 years in the industry, I've not once held a job where my keyboard speed had a noticeable effect on my productivity. Even when I had to type one-handed for a month, my productivity was unchanged. The average developer averages 10 lines of finished code per day. And even with a raw 10x th…

I tend to keyboard minimalism myself: doing as little typing as is required to produce the code. I.e.: lots of keyboard macros. Thus reducing the cognitive load of typing to a minimum.

Re: Leaving Neovim for Zed

#204

Post by pjmlp »

I have used multiple stuff since 1986, if it isn't an IDE like tool, I won't bother.

These kind of editors switching is like repairing that old covertible triumph from 1950 on the garage, interesting for some, not really something I care about.

Re: Leaving Neovim for Zed

#205

Post by monus »

WuxiFingerHold wrote: post #179

> Every now and then I would update a plugin in Neovim and everything would break, and I would have to spend time fixing it instead of getting work done. This is true, but only if you're not using one of the ready made distributions. I didn't switch to NeoVim until I discovered LazyVim and this amazing guide https://lazyvim-ambitious-devs.phillips.codes/ . That changed everything. I just use LazyVim out of the box, a…

> If I would knew some killer feature, I'd go ahead and write it here. But that's the thing, I can't think of any.

Speed to open and general snappiness. Nothing comes close to Zed especially in larger codebases as most agree in the thread.

Re: Leaving Neovim for Zed

#206

Post by lelanthran »

kstenerud wrote: post #191

> I was already a keyboard maximalist from previous jobs where I learned speed = productivity I've never understood this. In over 30 years in the industry, I've not once held a job where my keyboard speed had a noticeable effect on my productivity. Even when I had to type one-handed for a month, my productivity was unchanged. The average developer averages 10 lines of finished code per day. And even with a raw 10x th…

> The average developer averages 10 lines of finished code per day. And even with a raw 10x that amount to account for variance, changes, debugging etc, you'd be at 12 lines PER HOUR. Being generous at a full 80 chars per line, you have a maximum of 1000 keypresses per hour, or an average of one every 3 seconds. Even doubling your typing speed or keyboard response time would have no discernible effect.

Just my personal experience, it's not about how fast I can get my ideas down in writing (whether code or not), it's about how often I am broken out of the flow when typing.

At one extreme, using your stats above of "10 finished lines of code per day", you could argue that using this keyboard (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9BnLbv6QYcA) should have no effect on your productivity, and yet no developer would make or support this argument.

Small frictions add up; there's a joelonsoftware post that I read a long time ago about this[1], and it stuck for 24 years!

The best editor/environment is the one that gets out of my way. One where I don't need to look things up on google. One in which I have already learned all the shortcuts, and don't need to relearn them to make the software useful.

Emacs `M-x sql-connect` is much easier for me to do than to look up, in VS Code, what shortcut has been assigned to the extension I use that does the same thing, and then look it up again in a few years when that extension is no longer supported. Same for Vim commands.

Using VS Code, or a full-fledged IDE[2] removes the whole command interface: I now need to remember dozens of key-chords, not a handful of verbs and a handful of nouns. I need to remember which menu, and which submenu needs to be clicked.

Each time I want to do something in the IDE I switch focus from the code to the IDE. When in Vim or Emacs, that never happens!

The "keyboard maximalism" isn't about speed == productivity, IME. It's about "friction == disruption".

--------------------------------------------

[1] From https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/04/10/controlling-your-e...

> So that’s what days were like. A bunch of tiny frustrations, and a bunch of tiny successes. But they added up. Even something which seems like a tiny, inconsequential frustration affects your mood. Your emotions don’t seem to care about the magnitude of the event, only the quality.

> And I started to learn that the days when I was happiest were the days with lots of small successes and few small frustrations.

[2] Which I use daily, btw. I'm not knocking the developers who use IDEs.

Re: Leaving Neovim for Zed

#207

Post by wadim »

cassepipe wrote: post #110
linsomniac wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A couple years ago I got really tired of maintaining my own vim configs, like the author of this piece mentions (plugins and updates causing problems). I just wanted to get out of the business of maintaining my own configs, so I decided to try a bundle, and eventually ended up on LunarVim, with a small handful of "dealbreaker" config changes. As opposed to a basic vim and then a bunch of plugins and custom configs. I…

I also settled on Lunarvim (ans stopped worrying) I kinda had the same journey as the author except that I clinged to the terminal workflow he had leave behind. Choosing a Neovim distro was the solution for me.

> I also settled on Lunarvim (ans stopped worrying)

Then I have some sad news for you. :(

https://github.com/LunarVim/LunarVim/discussions/4518#discus...

Re: Leaving Neovim for Zed

#208

Post by owenpalmer »

kstenerud wrote: post #191

> I was already a keyboard maximalist from previous jobs where I learned speed = productivity I've never understood this. In over 30 years in the industry, I've not once held a job where my keyboard speed had a noticeable effect on my productivity. Even when I had to type one-handed for a month, my productivity was unchanged. The average developer averages 10 lines of finished code per day. And even with a raw 10x th…

> The average developer averages 10 lines of finished code per day

This is a ridiculous statement. Citation needed.

Re: Leaving Neovim for Zed

#209

Post by MrJohz »

meitham wrote: post #194
kstenerud wrote: post #191

> I was already a keyboard maximalist from previous jobs where I learned speed = productivity I've never understood this. In over 30 years in the industry, I've not once held a job where my keyboard speed had a noticeable effect on my productivity. Even when I had to type one-handed for a month, my productivity was unchanged. The average developer averages 10 lines of finished code per day. And even with a raw 10x th…

I don’t touch type and I’m fully with you on speed doesn’t increase performance, but I have recently started writing c# after two decades of python and man the number of lines that you have to write before you get to the meat of the logic! So I think that 10 lines of code are only to expressive languages not globally

In fairness, I don't have so much experience with C#, but my experience with Java and OO-heavy JS codebases is that most of the boilerplate can be automated away without much problem - typing "cl" generates a class definition, and I can hit tab to jump between the different bits I need to fill in.

With Copilot, this has become even easier because it is very good at guessing the relevant boilerplate to insert without needing to look through different options.

Re: Leaving Neovim for Zed

#210

Post by owenpalmer »

meitham wrote: post #194
kstenerud wrote: post #191

> I was already a keyboard maximalist from previous jobs where I learned speed = productivity I've never understood this. In over 30 years in the industry, I've not once held a job where my keyboard speed had a noticeable effect on my productivity. Even when I had to type one-handed for a month, my productivity was unchanged. The average developer averages 10 lines of finished code per day. And even with a raw 10x th…

I don’t touch type and I’m fully with you on speed doesn’t increase performance, but I have recently started writing c# after two decades of python and man the number of lines that you have to write before you get to the meat of the logic! So I think that 10 lines of code are only to expressive languages not globally

Learning to touch type is hard, but worth it. Once you learn, you'll realize the difference it makes.
Post reply on HN