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.
Notes on switching to Helix from Vim
61–70 of 242 posts
Re: Notes on switching to Helix from Vim
#62Helix still has no way to emulate Sublime's Ctrl + Click (placing multiple carets), nor Sublime's Ctrl + D (duplicating selections and creating a multiple caret for each)?
It's very funny to me that some comments before someone wrote that helix has the best multiple cursor implementation.
I was curious about what could it be.
Then you mention it doesn't have two essential behaviours that I am used to, and I wonder if these people just know vim and cli editors and that's why they have such opinion. Because I am also a SublimeTexter.
Re: Notes on switching to Helix from Vim
#63Vim is life, no need to change
It’s true. Once you master Vim, your journey to find the perfect editor will have come to an end. For the rest of your career, you can rest assured you will be using some form of vim. But some people don’t actually want to find the perfect editor, they would rather stay on the journey forever, trying to master a new tool every few years. Sounds miserable, never knowing true mastery and enlightenment.
Where does evil-mode land?
Re: Notes on switching to Helix from Vim
#64Vim is life, no need to change
I just heard of Helix and decided to take it for a spin. I'm not sure why I'd use it instead of Vim. For all the Vim similarity, inverting the do-this-to-that seems like an arbitrary annoyance that I don't understand. Why go from "change this word" (cw) to "I want to change this word, so I'm going to select it first, then change it" (wc). I mean, it's not a big deal, especially if you're not already using Vim, but wh…
the lack of a `gq` equivalent to reflow a paragraph, which julia mentioned, was the nail in the coffin for me when I tried it.
It's a nice project though, I just use that feature constantly
Re: Notes on switching to Helix from Vim
#65too invested in LazyVim.. just learned to use "edgy" with multiple windows: neo-tests, fs browser, diagnostic-trouble, Outline, etc.. and they are just too nice.
Re: Notes on switching to Helix from Vim
#66The one time I tried Helix, I could find no way to switch from noun-verb syntax to vim's noun-verb syntax, is it possible now?
Re: Notes on switching to Helix from Vim
#67I'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…
I feel the same way. I've put a lot of time into getting fast and efficient with Vim, so the benefits of another editor would have to be substantial to justify switching. As nice as Helix looks, I'm not sure it offers enough to make that leap.
Re: Notes on switching to Helix from Vim
#68Helix 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…
Don't worry, Fennel compiles to Lua so you can keep configuring Neovim with a Lisp dialect too!
Re: Notes on switching to Helix from Vim
#69I never managed to understand Vim/Emacs/Vile/Neovim.
Helix seemed all the same until I started watching a series of tutorials on Youtube.
I get better everyday.
I'm on Windows 10 x64 BTW
Re: Notes on switching to Helix from Vim
#70> 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…
> 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've been using Vim/Neovim for 20 years, but still can't get enough of which-key[1] which I only installed ~6 months ago. 1: https://github.com/folke/which-key.nvim
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