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

Notes on switching to Helix from Vim

jvns.ca

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 242 posts

Re: Notes on switching to Helix from Vim

#131

Post by kesor »

naikrovek wrote: post #41
kesor wrote: post #13

"Using vim/nvim for 20 years". "cba to configure LSPs its too hard". What?

I think a lot of people on this site have genuine reading comprehension problems. I mean that as an observation, not an attack. > "Using vim/nvim for 20 years". "cba to configure LSPs its too hard". What? Nowhere did she say that she tried and failed to set these up. Your comment indicates that you read it as her saying that it's too hard to do. Where did that come from? She said it "felt like too much work" which is…

When someone is competent, as must be after using a tool for 20 years (not days). Expecting that someone to complain about a difficulty for something trivial is surprising. There are other ways to highlight that it is easier or simpler in Helix to have working LSP, for example, saying it is "as easy as in vscode". But it is definitely bewildering why would the OP choose to start by bragging of the vast experience, and then focus on a complaint that most people expect from someone who has very little experience.

Re: Notes on switching to Helix from Vim

#132

Post by Karrot_Kream »

cycomanic wrote: post #123
nikolay wrote: post #7

Helix 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 chan…

Lisps make great configuration languages because of how dynamic they are. It's like Javascript on steroids. Redefine core symbols. Modify a syntax form and reevaluate all of your code so that it does one thing in one environment and something else in a different one. When building large software in a team this can be a big drag; learning some weird syntax form that a coworker merged in that you didn't review can be a headache and when everyone makes their own design patterns, the codebase becomes a mess.

But when you're just configuring software this heavily dynamic nature becomes a strength. I just need to build the abstractions in my config that I need, nobody else. It's easy to poke around in and spend a few minutes writing and iterating on code to get the config I want.

I agree that the prefix notation and the soup of parentheses give it a higher learning curve than something like Lua which is easily understandable if you have experience in pretty much any modern programming language. But it's not the mathematical/computational purity that makes Lisps appealing, it's their highly dynamic nature.

Re: Notes on switching to Helix from Vim

#133

Post by kesor »

NetMageSCW wrote: post #83
colordrops wrote: post #81

The first example of grep-ing source code is not great. It's trivial to install something like Telescope to have functionality similar to the Helix screenshot.

But how much do you have to find, vet (how much do you trust Telescope to not steal your credit cards one day), and install for all the features of helix?

And you can vet that Helix will not be stealing your personal information now and in the future? What an asinine comment. There is no security, the computer is spying on you, you can't really vet anything.

Re: Notes on switching to Helix from Vim

#134

Post by skydhash »

dtj1123 wrote: post #103
thefaux wrote: post #61

I 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 recently found out that Mitchell Hashimoto has a setup like this, which blew apart my belief that you need modern tooling to be productive. Do you not find that you fatigue more quickly as a result of having to actively recall everything though? I can't understand how doing things like this would actually result in better code.

Not GP, but I can add my two cents.

The trick is to avoid idle browsing of the code. Be intentional about what you need to do.

I use tools like grep/ripgrep to get a more focused of the code. Then with the line number, I can jump directly to where I need to be. Same with tools like linters and compilers.

In the same file, I often use search instead of line/character movement. You search for a symbols and you just cycle through their location.

I don't think it leads to a better code. But badly organized code will make this harder, so you tend to think about organization.

Re: Notes on switching to Helix from Vim

#135

Post by klauserc »

Was using vim for a decade, discovered Helix, installed it on all my systems and haven't looked back (at least not voluntarily; I'm always bewildered by the old-school CAD-like command-then-subject paradigm when I get thrown into vi on a random machine)

Re: Notes on switching to Helix from Vim

#136

Post by mi_lk »

simjnd wrote: post #111
eviks wrote: post #48

> crashes: every week or so there’s a segfault and the editor crashes. ... This doesn’t bother me that much though, I can just reopen it. Strange approach to data loss, since it doesn't have persistent undo, you can't just reopen it to the same editing state? > After using Vim/Neovim for 20 years, I’ve tried both “build my own custom configuration from scratch” and “use someone else’s pre-buld configuration system” a…

> presumably you would've been able to replicate it completely in the first X years of using vim, and then there is no hell anymore? I agree with this, but being able to ssh into a server and just grab Helix instead of copying over my Vim config and whatever else it depends on is really nice. Makes your dev env feel a lot more portable (although also more barebones than a crazy Vim config)

It's not like Helix is as ubiquitous as Vim on a random remote server. If that's not the case surely the effort to install Helix is bigger than copying Vim config?

Re: Notes on switching to Helix from Vim

#137

Post by jack_pp »

jvican wrote: post #17

I've fallen in love with Helix and now use it for everything. Moved from neovim and VS Code to Helix for the majority of my coding. For me, after trying the Lazy neovim plugin distro and being a long-time vim user, Helix fills a unique need: - It's beautiful (lots of attention to detail) - It's fast (meaning: at no point did I think Helix is slower than it should) - It's hugely ergonomic (each default keystroke reson…

If you need something between nvim and vscode what's the issue with using vscode with vim plugin?

Re: Notes on switching to Helix from Vim

#139

Post by joemi »

eviks wrote: post #48

> crashes: every week or so there’s a segfault and the editor crashes. ... This doesn’t bother me that much though, I can just reopen it. Strange approach to data loss, since it doesn't have persistent undo, you can't just reopen it to the same editing state? > After using Vim/Neovim for 20 years, I’ve tried both “build my own custom configuration from scratch” and “use someone else’s pre-buld configuration system” a…

>> little help popup telling me places I can go. I really appreciate this because I don’t often use the “go to definition” or “go to reference” feature and I often forget the keyboard shortcut.

> Exactly! Pity this basic contextual help isn't more widespread, every single app that uses a lot of keybind sequences could benefit from it, especially if it becomes a bit smarter and only shows a popup if you don't finish the sequence right away

I agree 100%. This would be helpful in so many places. That was my favorite part of the article -- one little paragraph and screenshot, but it made me desperately crave that feature almost everywhere. I agree that it'd need to be smart about it -- after a timeout, as you mentioned, is a great idea. That way it can stay out of your way if you know what you're doing, and only pop up when you hesitate.

Re: Notes on switching to Helix from Vim

#140

Post by galangalalgol »

neutronicus wrote: post #118
rand0m4r wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It might have been a bit harder in the past, but with recent versions of neovim (>=0.11) it's less than 20 lines of configuration. I have quite a few keybindings to jump back and forth through errors and the default keybidings already include things like renaming, go to definition or listing references. I'd be more than happy to help you configuring it to your needs.

FWIW, in my (emacs, C++) experience, writing the editor config is a relatively minor part of the yak-shaving required to have jump-to-definition on an actual work codebase. I had to get my project to emit compile_commands.json, get clangd, figure out which things about our build process clangd was not understanding from compile_commands.json and add them in .clangd. All to achieve a level of functionality significant…

Whatever vim is in rhel 8 supports ale. Ale with rust has been great. Go to definition is flawless, all my conpile and clippy errors are underlined as I type and binding a key to ALECodeAction will apply the auto fix if it has one. Usually that is to import whatever I just used, which vscode would do automatically, but still its nice and having vscode use clippy as well as check bogs it down. And ale runs cargo-fmt on save. So yeah, nothing I'd wish different from it.

Edit: upon further thought, I don't like having to move my hand to the arrow keys to select from the auto complete list, even if there is only one thing and then hit enter, rather than hitting tab to pick whatever is left.

Post reply on HN