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Notes on switching to Helix from Vim

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Re: Notes on switching to Helix from Vim

#191

Post by t_mahmood »

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)

How is so? I have my dot files in GitHub. I just have to clone, run `PlugInstall` and it's all ready.

Re: Notes on switching to Helix from Vim

#192

Post by mariusor »

notdefio wrote: post #47
mariusor wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure your implication of LSPs existing, specifically for vim, or in general, for 20 years is actually true in order that your questioning of Julia's skills to actually make sense. As a similar example, I could never be bothered to install and configure any LSPs even though I've been using vim for more than a decade. The friction of doing that was always just a little bit higher than installing a full blown ID…

ar_lan specifically mentioned Neovim distributions. Examples would be LazyVim and AstroNvim. These are packages you can install that provide Neovim in a pre-configured and opinionated way. They generally come with language servers, linting, and various other features out of the box, and have their own paradigms for configuration. They can be easier to get started with than just installing Neovim from scratch. But the…

The problem is that I must make these distributions fit within my well established configuration, which is not as easy as installing them on top of a blank one.

Also it might be the fact that vim was never my main programming tool when IDEs were available for the programming task at hand. I debug as much as I write code, so having the debugger in the same context is important to me.

These things may all sound like excuses, but what I'm trying to convey is that vim can be a tool with which someone is proficient, but it's not the main one for writing code, and as soon as friction gets higher, it gets disregarded in favour of something else.

Re: Notes on switching to Helix from Vim

#193

Post by helix278 »

kibwen wrote: post #184
eviks wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> every week or so there’s a segfault and the editor crashes.

The author of the OP appears to have edited it to indicate that it's just crashing, and doesn't know if it's a segfault or just a panic. It appears there is some known potential for segfaults in tree-sitter, which is a native C dependency.

I have had treesitter crashes in the past editing markdown, causing helix to segfault, but the particular bug that caused my crashes has been fixed since years.

Re: Notes on switching to Helix from Vim

#194

Post by psychoslave »

phplovesong wrote: post #5

Skimmed only. Most titles was like "i use X for that" then scrolled down for the next one. And thats the thing. Neovim (vim) is about the unix way, use existing tools and use them from vim. Last time i checked this was not an option in helix, and some very trivil things was impossible, like populating the quickfix (is it a thing n helix?) from a makefile command. Bottom line is helix is basically a stipped down versi…

>Last time i checked this was not an option in helix, and some very trivil things was impossible, like populating the quickfix (is it a thing n helix?) from a makefile command.

Not sure what "trivial" is trying to convey here, but in any case personally I would put quickfix list as a rather advanced feature. Like in the excellent book Practical Vim[1] its covered in chapter 17 on 21 chapters.

[1] https://learning.oreilly.com/library/view/practical-vim-2nd/...

Re: Notes on switching to Helix from Vim

#195

Post by bobnamob »

wycy wrote: post #153
ratrocket wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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" autocomp…

How is no syntax highlighting better, specifically?

Not op, but in my case a lifetime of colourblindness has desensitised me to colour as an indicator.

I have my editor configured with zero highlighting for keywords and syntactic elements. Admittedly, I have compilation/lint/syntax/type check errors set to invert the erroneous block, black background white text.

Syntax and keyword highlighting is just noise given I’ve been trained by decades of colourblind unfriendly interfaces

Re: Notes on switching to Helix from Vim

#196

Post by nerdponx »

soraminazuki wrote: post #164
nerdponx wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't even need the plugin nowadays, you can just go to the lspconfig repo and copy paste the default config if you don't know where to start. lspconfig was an incredible effort, and I consider it a good thing that it is now fading into a simple repository of default configurations.

I'd say that having a plugin with default configurations that is kept updated is a necessity. Because that's what enables me to use LSPs with a single line configuration.

Serious question: how often does a sensible default configuration need to change? I think I have used the same jedi-language-server config across projects and computers since before Neovim had a built-in LSP client, with the only changes being on the Neovim side gradually migrating to new features as they appeared.

Obviously do whatever works for you. But I do feel like most LSPs shouldn't need more than a few lines that you set and forget.

Re: Notes on switching to Helix from Vim

#198

Post by q0uaur »

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)

this was my plan, but then i got really into using LSPs and i'm not about to install every LSP on every server i ssh into.

Currently i just use sshfs to mount whatever directory i want to work on locally, nice to have all lsps available and also see my changes reflected on the server instantly.

Re: Notes on switching to Helix from Vim

#199

Post by b00ty4breakfast »

bobnamob wrote: post #195
wycy wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is no syntax highlighting better, specifically?

Not op, but in my case a lifetime of colourblindness has desensitised me to colour as an indicator. I have my editor configured with zero highlighting for keywords and syntactic elements. Admittedly, I have compilation/lint/syntax/type check errors set to invert the erroneous block, black background white text. Syntax and keyword highlighting is just noise given I’ve been trained by decades of colourblind unfriendly…

that's a very good reason to not use syntax highlighting. If that is what the other guys are dealing with, I withdraw my critique but I don't get the impression that is the case

Re: Notes on switching to Helix from Vim

#200

Post by sodapopcan »

leephillips wrote: post #167
sodapopcan wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fair enough, I definitely made some assumptions there, but it sure sounds the same based on the description. I guess `%` selects more than just the token? But ya, I'm way too invested in Vim to bother with Helix. I have years of scripts and plugins I've written. I can't even be bothered to switch to nvim (I tried once and was not fun).

“%” is a range operator standing for the entire buffer; so :%s just means to start a substitution on the whole buffer. Neovim will highlight what was previously searched for, in this case matched by the *, but that won’t actually affect the search command. The way :s works in Neovim looks like multiple cursors to me, but I’m not familiar enough with Helix to know what the difference is.

Ya, yes sorry, well aware of what `%` is, I was leaving out a lot of context there. Of course, as it turns out I was thinking in terms of my own mappings and not even then, I'm not sure why I thought `` came into play because my mapping is `gysiw` (`w` can be replaced with other text objects) which populates the commandline with `%s/\').'\>//g` (and moves the cursor left twice). I just press `` a lot, sometimes even before replacing because I have it remapped to not autojump to the next match and rather `set hlsearch`. So ya, I'm all kinds of wrong bitten by my own config, lol.
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