> I think what motivated me to try Helix is that I’ve been trying to get a working language server setup (so I can do things like “go to definition”) and getting a setup that feels good in Vim or Neovim just felt like too much work. After using Vim/Neovim for 20 years... I think this is catching me off guard. Especially in the past 5 years there are Neovim distributions that make this extremely easy to configure. I a…
Totally weird. LSP has been a neovim builtin for how long now? Two years?
Notes on switching to Helix from Vim
121–130 of 242 posts
Re: Notes on switching to Helix from Vim
#122If you're interested in learning Helix, consider doing so from the legendary nic-revs redo of the Helix docs: https://helix-editor.vercel.app/ Significantly more pleasant to look at than the OG docs and he includes some nice tips and tricks, e.g. recipes for efficient editing and keybinds that help mitigate the lack of a built-in terminal.
Thank you for this. I was always baffled by the unreadability of the official docs. For me, at least
`hx --tutor` is a life saver though. Did that to quickly catch up on hx keybindings and Claude chips in when I need more efficient things to do certain text editing operations.
Re: Notes on switching to Helix from Vim
#123Helix wants to be Emacs. Ever since they decided to use a built-in Lisp dialect called "Steel" for scripting and become the next Emacs, not the next Neovim, I stopped following it. I love Lisp, I wrote so much code in Lisp in the '80s and early '90s, but that was another millennium! It's 2025 now, and just because it's easy to write Lisp interpreters doesn't mean we should use them. In fact, maybe Forth is even easie…
Computer scientist and mathematicians love lisp/scheme, everyone else hates it. The problem is that the syntax, concepts etc are so different that you really have to learn the language to make even small changes. Just reading prefix notation takes quite a bit of adjustment. When I was using emacs doom every time I changed my config felt like stabbing in the dark (hence I moved away). In contrast I could make lua changes (without any prior lua knowledge) without any problems.
I don't want to learn a new language just to configure my editor.
So by choosing scheme they essentially say this is an editor for computer scientists only.
Re: Notes on switching to Helix from Vim
#124"Helix doesn’t have tabs, instead it has a nice buffer switcher (b) I can use to switch to the buffer I want"
It has tabs if you add (the completely undiscoverably named) bufferline="multiple" to the [editor] section in config.
Re: Notes on switching to Helix from Vim
#125Earlier quoted context omitted.
All of this plus that with their approach of shipping an editor that is useable out of the box I feel a lot safer from supply chain attacks. No matter if VSCode or (neo)vim, needing tens of plugins from almost that many different parties always made me feel quite uneasy.
But once helix adds plugins it will be exactly the same because those tens of VSCode plugins provide functionality not present in helix, so will be similarly implemented externally
I hope they will properly sandbox plugins like any modern software should.
Re: Notes on switching to Helix from Vim
#126I use :reflow (mapped to =) decently well for wrapping comments, but it doesn't do well at splitting a long single line into multiple lines. My workaround is to add a second empty comment underneath and include it in the selection before hitting =.
Likely fix here, coming soon according to the last comment: https://github.com/helix-editor/helix/pull/11738
Re: Notes on switching to Helix from Vim
#127> I think what motivated me to try Helix is that I’ve been trying to get a working language server setup (so I can do things like “go to definition”) and getting a setup that feels good in Vim or Neovim just felt like too much work. After using Vim/Neovim for 20 years... I think this is catching me off guard. Especially in the past 5 years there are Neovim distributions that make this extremely easy to configure. I a…
That is surprising. I didn't have much trouble getting LSP working either in og or neovim. My editor config is fairly barebones by preference, so its not like I spend a lot of time editing my configs either. I will say, Lua is a lot more ergonimic than vimscript for a lot of things, but I appreciate that I can still use the old ways at times. Like ALE isn't leaving my config unless I'm forced to remove it for some re…
I use a plugin[0] for LSP in vim and it's pretty easy to setup there too. Installing and configuring the lsp software itself take more time as I'm constantly moving between OS.
Also, Emacs and Vim is very much about making the tool your own. I don't mind shaving the yak every now and then, because once an inconvenience is solved, it stay solved.
Re: Notes on switching to Helix from Vim
#128I cannot express how liberating it feels to opt out of "advanced" editor tools like lsp. I program in neovim with no plugins, no syntax highlighting and no autocomplete of any kind. There is a discipline that this imposes that I believe leads to better quality programs. It's not for everyone I suppose, but I really recommend trying it.
I can see no plugins, I can even see no autocomplete but no syntax highlighting is just making things difficult for the sake of it
To each their own. I quit using syntax highlighting about 10 years ago and won't ever go back (been programming for 25 years, vim/neovim user for 24 years). I just like it better, it works for me. It definitely does not make things "difficult for the sake of it" (for me). There are dozens of us! :)
(As to the rest: I use a pretty minimal set of plugins and I use the built in nvim C-o/C-p or C-x C-o/p "dumb" autocomplete. At least I think it's built in...)
Re: Notes on switching to Helix from Vim
#129Earlier quoted context omitted.
> if there's actually a choice to make. I don't get it, there is always a choice to make, which is which action to continue with? > Showing too many choices at once can be overwhelming It can't be more overwhelming than having to remember all of those choices and using external docs/configs to look them up! Besides, it's not like there are no improvements possible and you have to show everything at once. For example,…
> I don't get it, there is always a choice to make, which is which action to continue with? The point is that if the input for a command is XY, there had better also be an XZ. Otherwise XY should just be X.
You’re going to hate that my shortcut for Normal mode is j-k, and I don’t have any other j-* commands.
Re: Notes on switching to Helix from Vim
#130I cannot express how liberating it feels to opt out of "advanced" editor tools like lsp. I program in neovim with no plugins, no syntax highlighting and no autocomplete of any kind. There is a discipline that this imposes that I believe leads to better quality programs. It's not for everyone I suppose, but I really recommend trying it.
I can see no plugins, I can even see no autocomplete but no syntax highlighting is just making things difficult for the sake of it
You kinda get used to it. I often `cat` and `less` code in the terminal and my $EDITOR is `mg`. I know about bat, but it's never in base.
And I'm using more my mental idea of the code and direct line:column navigation. My context is often less than 10 lines of code.