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Notes on switching to Helix from Vim

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Re: Notes on switching to Helix from Vim

#91

Post by dcre »

nikolay wrote: post #7

Helix 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…

It's very hard to argue the plugin system has made Helix anything in particular, considering it is not merged yet. Approximately nobody's experience of Helix up to this point has been influenced by this choice.

Re: Notes on switching to Helix from Vim

#93

Post by b00ty4breakfast »

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 can see no plugins, I can even see no autocomplete but no syntax highlighting is just making things difficult for the sake of it

Re: Notes on switching to Helix from Vim

#94

Post by dtj1123 »

If you're interested in learning Helix, consider doing so from the legendary nic-revs redo of the Helix docs:

https://helix-editor.vercel.app/

Significantly more pleasant to look at than the OG docs and he includes some nice tips and tricks, e.g. recipes for efficient editing and keybinds that help mitigate the lack of a built-in terminal.

Re: Notes on switching to Helix from Vim

#95

Post by bityard »

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…

I don't have direct experience with either Helix or Kakoune but after only a few minutes tinkering around, I can see one big reason: In Helix, most of the basic commands seem to be the same as vi. Whereas I understand Kakoune inverts the action/movement paradigm of vi. Maybe that's a more sensible design, I don't know. I didn't check to see whether or not the key bindings were similar but at that point, it's rather moot.

I've been using vim for 25 years, my muscle memory isn't going to tolerate switching to a whole new text-editing "language" at this point. But I could perhaps learn to live with a new dialect.

Re: Notes on switching to Helix from Vim

#96

Post by mechanicum »

klaussilveira wrote: post #42

Helix 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)?

Cmd + click places multiple carets on macOS. Apparently – I never touch the mouse when I’m editing in Helix. I don’t know which modifier it is on other platforms.

I’m not sure if replicating Sublime’s Ctrl + D is possible or not, but there are other ways to achieve every use case for it I can immediately think of. e.g. I think I’d typically be doing `h` to select every instance of the symbol under the cursor, or using `s`elect to reduce a selection to a match, possibly yanked and pasted.

Re: Notes on switching to Helix from Vim

#97

Post by GalaxyNova »

b00ty4breakfast wrote: post #93
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 can see no plugins, I can even see no autocomplete but no syntax highlighting is just making things difficult for the sake of it

The true Plan9 aesthetic

Re: Notes on switching to Helix from Vim

#98

Post by ngrilly »

I've been trying Helix and really like it. But as someone coming from VS Code, I've been relying a lot on VS Code automatically saving and restoring sessions on restart (things like opened files, unsaved files, cursor position, etc.). It's helpful when I occasionally restart my computer. How do you that in Helix (or for that matter in Neovim)?

Re: Notes on switching to Helix from Vim

#99

Post by nrvn »

As they say, YMMV.

My personal journey:

2010-2014 - sublime text

2014-2017 - vim and later neovim (bunch of plugins to resemble IDE-like experience)

2017-2024 - jetbrains (intellij idea with language plugins mostly)

2024-now - neovim (with lazyvim)

I tried helix in 2023 but it did not stick. Do not remember details but remember the final impressions of having to train muscle memory to “awkward” vim-like key bindings and dealing with various annoyances and bugs. End of trial and error I left it as a terminal $EDITOR for quick and adhoc tasks while doing all the heavylifting in intellij. Ditched it finally when vim muscle memory and hx muscle memory made my brain short circuit several times in a row.

Now I am back to neovim and it is surprisingly as productive (when equipped with proper plugins) as the beefy jetbrains IDEs.

That said, helix looks promising. Maybe it’s the next big thing, who knows)

Re: Notes on switching to Helix from Vim

#100

Post by eviks »

zahlman wrote: post #73
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. Con…

> if there's actually a choice to make.

I don't get it, there is always a choice to make, which is which action to continue with?

> Showing too many choices at once can be overwhelming

It can't be more overwhelming than having to remember all of those choices and using external docs/configs to look them up! Besides, it's not like there are no improvements possible and you have to show everything at once. For example, all your "all kinds of repetable actions" can be limited by the most frequently used 10 actions and an "others" submenu you could invoke separately if you were looking for something else. And your "another digit" is just a single line "0-9 continue the count", so what's the issue there?

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