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Helix Editor 25.07

helix-editor.com

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Re: Helix Editor 25.07

#61

Post by dpatterbee »

mmcromp wrote: post #34
spapas82 wrote: post #28

Helix is great and includes a lot of stuff out of the box (file pickers, syntax highlighting, linting etc) without any configuration or installing plugins (contrary to vim or neovim). I would definitely use it but the main disadvantage is that some keybindings work differently than vim. I understand that the keybindings may be better that the vim ones but after years of using vim I expect "x" in normal mode to delete…

For me, the issue isn't that I'm unwilling to learn new things. It's that I cannot use these keybindings anywhere else. Almost all online editors and workstations have some sort of vim keybindings. When I ssh into a Linux machine I can trust it has vim editor. It's like qwerty keyboard, I'm sure that there's better layouts but I just cannot discard the flexibility of being able to jump on most machines and be 99% pro…

Honestly, I don't think this is a big deal. I use helix as my primary editor, but when I'm on another machine and it only has vi or whatever I just use that and I can mentally switch to using the vim keybinds with little issue. Like sometimes I'll mistakenly `m-i-w-c` instead of `c-i-w` or `d` instead of `x`, but then I just hit `u` and continue.

Re: Helix Editor 25.07

#62

Post by [deleted] »

aquova wrote: post #42
suby wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, thanks for the correction. I'm wrong on how common this is. I just tested CLion, VS Code, and Sublime Text. I thought all three behaved as described, but only CLion did. I wish it was more common though, I find it a lot more intuitive and clear on what's happening.

Huh, that's interesting. I've only used VSCode and Sublime, never CLion. I'm honestly not sure how I'd feel going the other way, but I could see the behavior being annoying if you're not expecting it.

[deleted]

Re: Helix Editor 25.07

#63

Post by varbhat »

b0sk wrote: post #60
dman wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its not very clear to me which of these Helix hasnt hit. To me it looks like Helix is very close to what you are looking for.

FYI (for OP): check this fork out https://github.com/usagi-flow/evil-helix

It's a soft fork trying to catch up with the main codebase. It feels like a second class citizen. Features introduced in Helix might not be intended for usage with vim keybindings anyway.

Re: Helix Editor 25.07

#64

Post by DavidHaerer »

I love the example with git blame for the current line. Helix is my daily driver alongside lazygit, however I much appreciate a tighter integration of Git in Helix. A colleague showed me what he can do with magit in emacs, and that was some next-level stuff (e.g. cycling the buffer through the Git history of the file). Previously I was using Neovim, but I'm really happy with my switch to Helix. So much less config, keybindings I find more intuitive and multi-cursor editing. For agentic coding I'm looking into Aider and OpenCode. I expect a tool like that to join my terminal setup with Helix and lazygit.

Re: Helix Editor 25.07

#65

Post by ByGhacaxda »

jtrn wrote: post #37
MoreQARespect wrote: post #4

Does it do code folding yet?

Here is the forum post that convinced me NOT to continue getting into Helix. It says all I need about the project health. And given the development since then, I am more confident that it’s a bad horse to bet on. https://github.com/helix-editor/helix/issues/1840#issuecomme...

I've never used Helix and I likely never will, so I've got no horse in this race. But code folding, seriously? I'd be totally against it. It's yet another editor feature that ties your source code to tooling. It allows you to write too large and too many functions, while keeping the code readable to yourself. Source code should be readable (mostly) independently of tooling. It should be readable when printed to paper. (This is also why type inference in languages that aren't inherently functional languages is incredibly stupid; I understand that the compiler can infer the type under "auto", but now, when reviewing the code, I too must. Who the fuck wants that, seriously.)

And I'm unsure what your problem is with the discussion in the ticket. I've now read the first comment (the feature request), and the last comment (the one you highlighted). Both sound totally reasonable to me.

Re: Helix Editor 25.07

#66

Post by varbhat »

f_devd wrote: post #46
dman wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its not very clear to me which of these Helix hasnt hit. To me it looks like Helix is very close to what you are looking for.

Only extension system, but honestly I've never missed it in 3y of usage coming from nvim.

vim keybinding. helix doesn't have vim keybindings. it might or might not be better but it isn't vim keybinding.

Re: Helix Editor 25.07

#67

Post by munificent »

varbhat wrote: post #39

Congrats! I am happy for helix but i don't think it's a good fit for me. I use Neovim. It does what i want it to do. It's one of the best available options. But, i am not completely satisfied with it. I personally want an editor with following: * Modern codebase. Written from scratch. * VIM Keybindings: I have muscle memory of Vim. I would like to use Vim Keybindings in my editor. I don't want to use any other keybin…

> I have muscle memory of Vim.

I respect the preferences of others but I think that most people overfit for muscle memory. I've switched OSes/editors/IDEs many times in my career. Every time, the first day or two I feel like "This is the worst fucking thing ever, I can't even type God damn it I want to set the computer on fire and become a farmer."

But... that passes. After a couple of days, I have new muscle memory and it's fine. It would be a shame to let a few days of discomfort control which software I use when software varies in its other capabilities so much more widely than just keybindings.

Re: Helix Editor 25.07

#68

Post by sysashi »

Been using helix for over a year (mostly Elixir development) after a decade of (neo)vim, very happy so far! My config file is like 10 lines long :D Congrats on the release!

Re: Helix Editor 25.07

#69

Post by celrod »

mananaysiempre wrote: post #20
0cf8612b2e1e wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Authors are free to do as they please, but as an entitled member of the peanut gallery…aren’t there already enough small configuration languages? Seems like a distraction when there are already hundreds of schemes, Lua, Janet, etc.

In that case, Kakoune[1] (Helix’s main inspiration) is probably more your jam. You get an RPC interface and are free to script it from anything you want (shell to Rust is about the range I’ve encountered). It does mean that you don’t get the batteries you get with Helix (e.g. LSP support) and need to bring your own (e.g. kakoune-lsp[2]). [1] https://kakoune.org/ [2] https://github.com/kakoune-lsp/kakoune-lsp

Is including batteries the main reason helix seems to have started taking off, while kakoune hasn't?

I use kakoune, because I like the client/server architecture for managing multiple windows, which helix can't do. The less configuring I do the better, but I've hardly done any in the past year. It's nice to have the option.

I do use kakoune-lsp and kak-tree-sitter.

Re: Helix Editor 25.07

#70

Post by ssernikk »

xmonkee wrote: post #49
lynndotpy wrote: post #12

I love Helix, I highly recommend it to anyone who never quite got on board with vim but likes the idea of it. I found it much easier to learn and use, and it is distinguished from other vimlikes in that it's got a useful starting configuration.

I really really like it. I honestly think they should wrap it in a GUI with some conveniences like a mouse based file browser and it can compete well with vscode.

Zed has Helix keybindings now!

https://zed.dev/

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