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Notes on switching to Helix from Vim

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Re: Notes on switching to Helix from Vim

#71

Post by eikenberry »

tasn wrote: post #56
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…

> 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

mini.clue is another good option for this feature in neovim.

https://github.com/nvim-mini/mini.clue

Re: Notes on switching to Helix from Vim

#72

Post by yacthing »

thefaux wrote: post #61

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.

Most people optimize for productivity and not raw quality of code. I can't imagine that your productivity is higher for removing autocomplete.

I'm not saying you need every plugin ever, but autocomplete?

Maybe you haven't tried "advanced" editors in a while, and it was a lot worse last time you tried?

Re: Notes on switching to Helix from Vim

#73

Post by zahlman »

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…

> 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

Counterpoint: the sequence should only have an opportunity to be "unfinished" if there's actually a choice to make. Showing too many choices at once can be overwhelming and in the Vim environment there are usually a ton of choices. Consider for example if I input `n10` in editing mode; that could be followed by all kinds of repeatable actions and it could be followed by another digit of the count.

Re: Notes on switching to Helix from Vim

#74

Post by efxhoy »

thefaux wrote: post #61

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.

I had a few periods of doing the same in sublime text, I did use syntax highlighting though. It’s a really great feeling and very liberating, especially in a greenfield project.

Can’t really justify it at work though, projects are too big to and gnarly keep in my head.

Re: Notes on switching to Helix from Vim

#75

Post by zahlman »

celrod wrote: post #10
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…

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…

Aside from the other replies, marketing matters. This is the first I've heard of this thing which apparently dates to 2011.

Re: Notes on switching to Helix from Vim

#76

Post by quirino »

The best thing to have happened to nvim in recent history is mini.nvim. It's a collection of plugins by echasnovski which satisfies many of your needs in a very consistent, very well documented way.

With nvim 0.12 (nightly) I've switched to vim.pack (built in plugin manager) and the only plugins I had to install are mini.nvim and lspconfig.

Re: Notes on switching to Helix from Vim

#77

Post by ratrocket »

quirino wrote: post #76

The best thing to have happened to nvim in recent history is mini.nvim. It's a collection of plugins by echasnovski which satisfies many of your needs in a very consistent, very well documented way. With nvim 0.12 (nightly) I've switched to vim.pack (built in plugin manager) and the only plugins I had to install are mini.nvim and lspconfig.

To save anyone else the search:

mini.nvim site: https://nvim-mini.org/mini.nvim/

repo: https://github.com/nvim-mini/mini.nvim

Re: Notes on switching to Helix from Vim

#78

Post by eikenberry »

I switched from Neovim to Helix as my primary editor for around a year before switching back to Neovim. The way I'd describe the difference is that Helix is a text/code editor and Neovim is a toolkit to build a text/code editor. Helix is very simple and hits the 'just works' pretty well, but it's development is slow and w/o extensions it isn't flexible enough to handle every situation. Neovim can be a PITA to setup and maintain, but it's flexibility and power are very compelling. It also is semi-mainstream and gets a lot more support... eg. it has the only official, non-vscode, copilot plugin. I still use Helix as my backup editor (when I'm fixing issue with Neovim) and I look forward to it maturing a bit more and for the extension system to land and see where it goes after that.

Re: Notes on switching to Helix from Vim

#79

Post by treve »

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…

Also been doing vim and now neovim for 20+ years. LSP just broke and several keybinds alongside it and just not looking forward to figuring out what happened (but will anyway). It's a huge mental block for me whenever I need to get into configuration. So to me this feels very relatable.

Re: Notes on switching to Helix from Vim

#80

Post by danslo »

I tried to switch from neovim to helix for a couple weeks, but noted down the following things that were essential to me and not implemented yet:

- Code actions on save, for example adding Go imports: https://github.com/helix-editor/helix/pull/6486

- Fuzzy search with a filepicker like telescope+rg, seems to have been added earlier this year: https://github.com/helix-editor/helix/pull/11285

- Automatically updating buffers when the files on disk change (claude, templ, sqlc, etc): https://github.com/helix-editor/helix/issues/1125

- File tree in browser, which has been rejected in favor of a plugin system which has not materialized yet: https://github.com/helix-editor/helix/pull/5768

There were a number of other things too, that I could have lived with. I guess I'll try again in a year or two.

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