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From VS Code to Helix

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Re: From VS Code to Helix

#111

Post by bitbasher »

janice1999 wrote: post #80
preommr wrote: post #19

> 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.…

> 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.

Re: From VS Code to Helix

#112

Post by bitbasher »

I used Vim for over 15 years. I then used NeoVim for a couple years.

I tried Helix for several months. I then tried VS Code for the first time and only lasted about eight weeks. I gave Zed a try but gave up because it required a GPU which my machine didn't have and there's a login button on the editor which I found ridiculous (I don't use GitHub, how am I supposed to log in). I then tried RustRover / JetBrains products for a few weeks.

Ultimately, I ended up back in Vim8 (default install on my LTS distro). I like to think I've given each editor a fair try.

1. Vanilla vim is just there and works. You can use it with or without plugins and it works great. The built in :make / compiler options are a viable alternative to lsp / linter plugins. Also, it has ctags support built in which works for dozens of languages. You can also use a linter/lsp plugin by adding to your optional plugins and simply do `:packadd vim-lsp` or whatever the plugin name is whenever you want to use it. It's literally a text editor, with optional plugins.

2. NeoVim is "plugin hell". It's an editor that people use as an IDE and require a dozen plugins to do so. You could use it like Vim (see above), but no one does that. I don't have any issues with NeoVim as a tool, but the community and "influencers" are annoying to me.

3. Helix was a nice IDE out of the box, no plugins required. Ultimately I found the different key mappings to be annoying for me (15+ years of vim muscle memory). It's not a bad alternative if you want the "IDE experience" in the terminal. It's certainly better than stringing 24 plugins together and hoping none of them are ever compromised.

I won't discuss the other editors or IDES. I don't want to hurt anyone's feelings :)

Re: From VS Code to Helix

#113

Post by atiedebee »

jsmailes wrote: post #2

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 wel…

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 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 (i summons a clippy that shows all the different objects you can select)

Re: From VS Code to Helix

#114

Post by cnhajzwgz »

eviks wrote: post #91
bccdee wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Not sure this is what the OP had in mind but in my experience Helix just ships with more keybinds than bare vim/nvim. Many of the nice keybinds shipped by LazyVim that I can't live without now (symbol search, LSP jumps, treesitter navigation etc) work out of the box in Helix.

Re: From VS Code to Helix

#115

Post by wasabi991011 »

dkdcio wrote: post #46
preommr wrote: post #19

> 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.…

I recently learned about the whole “GNU/Linux” naming thing and got a good kick out of it https://www.gnu.org/gnu/gnu-linux-faq.en.html

I've only ever read the meme/copypasta, so thanks for sharing. This is much more reasonable than I was expecting, I'm convinced.

Re: From VS Code to Helix

#116

Post by wasabi991011 »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #23
NoboruWataya wrote: post #20

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…

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 developmen…

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.

Re: From VS Code to Helix

#117

Post by mm_aa »

I try to get on helix from time to time but the lack of built in terminal emulator stops me every time. What is the suggested story of going from location in compiler output in a different tab to the editor? In vs code it is just one ctrl click away.

Re: From VS Code to Helix

#118

Post by tux1968 »

eviks wrote: post #93
tux1968 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But Vim has visual-mode, which is select-then-action too.

not really, vim's visual mode always extends selection, while in Helix the base mode selects with your base commands so you can act on the selection, but it doesn't extend to the next one. For example, moving by 2 words only selects the 2nd one, not both like in Visual mode. (although in this specific case of selecting everything this difference isn't visible)

The details are different, but they're both select-then-act. Admittedly, I've never used Helix, but I don't see how what you've described is a game changer. Surely, at least sometimes, what you want to do is exactly what visual-mode provides: explicitly select a region, using the combined movement of any available operator, and then act on that region.

Re: From VS Code to Helix

#119

Post by whatevertrevor »

wuhhh wrote: post #85
pigcat wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Right back at you, that’s super neat!

Let me add my third way of doing this in vim:

    :%s//replacement/(gcn)
As you can guess invokes a special register that contains the "word" currently under the cursor.

Re: From VS Code to Helix

#120

Post by thaumasiotes »

milch wrote: post #89
thaumasiotes wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> on both US QWERTY and Colemak when you constantly type [];:{}| and so on, your pinky has to reach over to do it. At least for me that meant contorting my hand a bit to reach over. On my split keyboard all the symbols are behind a layer on the home row, and I barely use the pinky for anything, which fixes the issue. On a completely standard rectangular-block keyboard, I don't use pinkies to type. Actually, I do use…

Maybe my hands are small, but to type []|\+= and not use my pinky I would either have to move my entire hand over or contort it even more to use my ring finger

Move your hand.
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