Live data from Hacker News

From VS Code to Helix

ergaster.org

21–30 of 142 posts

Re: From VS Code to Helix

#21
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'm not sure if this counts as an act of "resistance", but either way its value isn't dependent upon the amount of faffing involved.

Re: From VS Code to Helix

#22

I've tried Neovim, but still use VSCode because everything either works out of the box or takes 2 clicks to install an extension for and things like drag and drop into the file explorer or the remote extension make it really quick to use. The only other real GUI contender I've seen is Jetbrains's IDEs (the free educational plan is great) but having seperate IDEs for different languages gets a bit annoying if you have…

You don't really need the different IDEs. For example, you can install the Rust plugin and the TypeScript plugin in IntelliJ Ultimate, without needing RustRover and WebStorm.

Re: From VS Code to Helix

#23

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 development and doesn't have some of the extensions and tools that I sometimes use in VS Code.

If I were to go back to e.g. Java I'd probably use IntelliJ again, but then, the enterprise I work for would be shelling out for it.

Re: From VS Code to Helix

#24
post #3
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…

That keyboard layout is a great analogy. Maybe I would have tried Helix in my early twenties, but I’m too old for that now (30s lol).

I was on sublime text for the last 12 years. I made the switch to helix and although I missed some features, it's been a great change. I never could get into the vim bindings, but helix's defaults are great and I don't need to go plugin hunting in order to make the editor functional.

There's missing features I really want, but they'll be added eventually. Git blame in line, some scripting support, better find-replace across a project and not just the opened buffers.

Just give it a try for a week or two straight. No using your other editors. Cold turkey. You'll be surprised at how quickly you'll relearn. It took me about three weeks using it full time to get decent. The first day or so were brutal.

Re: From VS Code to Helix

#26

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 ended up switching to Zed after VS Code lost connection to my dev VM and locked up one too many times. I am not sure what the issue is- maybe the VM is just running out of memory and nuking the VSCode daemon? But either way, Zed has not had this problem at all.

I never had much problem with feeling VSCode was slow (outside of those lockups) but Zed surprised me by feeling actively fast. I do miss several extensions a lot though!

Re: From VS Code to Helix

#27
Helix boast itself as a no config tool, but you have to find a lsp, installl it, edit a toml to activate it. I dont think we can call that "config less". Success would be something like LazyVim but without the nagging of updates each time you open it.

Re: From VS Code to Helix

#28

I've tried Neovim, but still use VSCode because everything either works out of the box or takes 2 clicks to install an extension for and things like drag and drop into the file explorer or the remote extension make it really quick to use. The only other real GUI contender I've seen is Jetbrains's IDEs (the free educational plan is great) but having seperate IDEs for different languages gets a bit annoying if you have…

Does CLion not contain the JS tools? The other have them.

Re: From VS Code to Helix

#29
For me personally I use VSCode + Vim Extension and I find the combo quite perfect. I've been using VSCode pretty much my entire career and with the vim extension I can make things like editing very "vim like" but still be able to break out and do other things the "vscode way"

Re: From VS Code to Helix

#30
I really, really want to use Helix but I want to share bindings with VSCode/IntelliJ, and all the plugins that promise them have lots quirks, exceptions and various gaps. I know it's never gonna be 100%, but sometimes simple stuff is broken (x to select line in Helix, selected line+newline in the latest plugin I tried).
Post reply on HN