Notes on switching to Helix from Vim • Hacker News Board

Re: Notes on switching to Helix from Vim

#31

Post by sodapopcan » Fri, Oct 10, 2025, 5:32 PM UTC

commandersaki wrote: post #22

That bit about search using the ripgrep plugin not providing context has always been available using telescope and a handful of clone plugins.

Indeed, Vim has had ways to do this for years, before nvim. I suppose their point is that it comes out of the box? It is worded in a way that makes it seem like they think like there are no options.

There are other things too, like pressing `*` then using `:%s` is no different than the behaviour they describe. I use a plugin that shows you all the updates live as you type making it essentially the same as multiple cursors (for this example). The only difference is that you're typing on the command prompt as opposed to the current line.

Re: Notes on switching to Helix from Vim

#32

Post by weinzierl » Fri, Oct 10, 2025, 5:32 PM UTC

"using a terminal-based text editor

For many years I’d mostly been using a GUI version of vim/neovim, so switching to actually using an editor in the terminal was a bit of an adjustment."

For a long time my pain with this was that I often want to open an ephemeral editor while not losing context and sight of my terminal.

With a GUI editor you always get a fresh window, but in the terminal this is difficult.

Luckily

    zellij edit

solves this issue nicely for me.

Re: Notes on switching to Helix from Vim

#33

Post by ikety » Fri, Oct 10, 2025, 5:32 PM UTC

pheggs wrote: post #18

celrod wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use kakoune, and don't understand why helix seems to be taking off while kakoune (which predated and inspired helix) remains niche. Kakoune fully embraces the unix philosophy, even going so far as relying on OS (or terminal-multiplexer, e.g. kitty or tmux) for window management (via client/sever, so each kakoune instance can still share state like open buffers). A comparison going into the differences (and embracin…

I genuinely don't like the concept of the keyboard interaction in helix and kakoune, selecting things to modify them. I don't know what it is, but it somehow just feels much less satisfactory to me personally compared to the vim way.

The biggest benefit is multiple cursors. The helix and kakoune multiple cursor implementation are probably the best in any editor. It just goes hand in hand with selection first.

Re: Notes on switching to Helix from Vim

#34

Post by christophilus » Fri, Oct 10, 2025, 5:33 PM UTC

weinzierl wrote: post #21

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…

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.

Their cargo.lock file is 3500 lines or so: https://github.com/helix-editor/helix/blob/master/Cargo.lock

So, I kind of agree with you, but that’s still a lot of dependencies baked into the editor. It’s probably not as bad as Neovim+plugins, but it’s still a supply chain issue.

Re: Notes on switching to Helix from Vim

#35

Post by lawn » Fri, Oct 10, 2025, 5:33 PM UTC

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…

> This might have been different had I been a vimscript wizard, which I'm not.

You mean Lua wizard (for Neovim).

Re: Notes on switching to Helix from Vim

#36

Post by Voklen » Fri, Oct 10, 2025, 5:42 PM UTC

weinzierl wrote: post #32

"using a terminal-based text editor For many years I’d mostly been using a GUI version of vim/neovim, so switching to actually using an editor in the terminal was a bit of an adjustment." For a long time my pain with this was that I often want to open an ephemeral editor while not losing context and sight of my terminal. With a GUI editor you always get a fresh window, but in the terminal this is difficult. Luckily z…

I use Helix and Zellij and it has been amazing, requiring very minimal configuration and maintenance.

Re: Notes on switching to Helix from Vim

#37

Post by fingerlocks » Fri, Oct 10, 2025, 5:42 PM UTC

ar_lan wrote: post #19

> 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?

Re: Notes on switching to Helix from Vim

#38

Post by Macha » Fri, Oct 10, 2025, 5:46 PM UTC

I've tried helix a few times but I've also found it clashes violently with my vim muscle memory, largely because I still use vim in lots of not-vim environments like IdeaVim etc.

Clearly I've been able to have seperate modes in my mind for "traditional" keybindings, as I don't find myself having difficulty switching from a text field in my browser or chat apps and then going to vim and back, so I wonder if it's just a case of the helix muscle memory needing to be so ingrained, or if it's just in an uncanny-valley to the vim experience.

Re: Notes on switching to Helix from Vim

#39

Post by zozbot234 » Fri, Oct 10, 2025, 5:47 PM UTC

MangoToupe wrote: post #11

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…

`ed` is really much more in the spirit of unix. `vi` culture popped up since then, and the idea of driving other tools from an editor is more of an emacs/lisp lineage.

`ed` is in the spirit of teletypes. It's the editor of choice when all you have is a dumb text-based prompt with no control of full-screen display. The whole point of `vi` originally was to be a `vi`sual mode for `ex`, which is a more full-featured variety of `ed`.

Re: Notes on switching to Helix from Vim

#40

Post by gtsop » Fri, Oct 10, 2025, 5:50 PM UTC

I got tired of the constantly moving space of IDEs and their plugins.

After 10 years of writting software, i know exactly what i want out of my IDE, so i took up a clean (completely clean) neovim and started building every single functionality by myself exactly as i like it. I call it, jokingly, unlazyvim.

I had been using vim for many years, but finally, after so many years my editor feels like a fine glove. Don't look up my code, don't ask what I built. Go build your own.