Helix - A modal text editor
Helix - A modal text editor
Helix does not aim to be a better vim / neovim. Thus, for example, there are officially no vim bindings and Helix follows the selection → action model. Helix is also a relatively new project.
I am a fairly long time emacs user, used it as my primary editor and note taking app for around six years. I have a config large enough to warrant its own git repo separate from my normal dotfiles.
Before emacs I used vim for several years.
After really getting into Rust, I decided about three months ago to just take a look at helix and see what it was about… and I haven’t opened emacs or vim again since.
LSP and tree-sitter cover like 90% of what my old config was doing out of the box, and the kakoune inspired key bindings just felt so natural. I feel at home without the overhead of configuration paralysis.
Don’t get me wrong, helix has plenty of room to grow, but I’m excited to grow with it.
Been using it on all my machines for many months now. Replaced all my basic usage that I had of vim/neovim and all the attempted and failed customisations and plugins I had tried to install. It works very well for console editing any file I need to reach without being overwhelming with weird short cuts I'll never be able to learn and with nice enough UI/UX that guides and teaches. Even better the integration with lsp allows to launch some project files and have the basics like go to definition kinda work.
Tried to learn vim for many years without being succefull in doing much more than just moving around and inserting/deleting text with the most basic commands.
It's great for anyone that doesn't want to go the vim route but still get a powerful editor to learn.
While I totally understand the struggle of learning Vim, I would still recommend it over Helix for the fact that most popular IDE support "vim mode" or "vim plugin", making vim not only a text editor but also a popular workflow across development environments. I would totally try out Helix if the key memory isn't only restricted to the Helix program
I recently gave it a try after seeing dessalines recommending it. It is pretty cool but years of vim muscle memory won’t go away so easily :D
In my opinion, users who already use vim are not the primary target audience of Helix. I see the target group more among users who want to switch from a "normal" editor to a modal editor. The selection → action model and the easier shortcuts probably make the switch easier for many. I personally don't like vim at all because of the handling (purely subjective view). Helix will definitely not be my default editor but I get along much better with it than with vim or neovim.
When I first tried Helix, my main concern (that prevented me from getting too far into it) was not going from Vim to Helix, but the other way around. Vim (or sometimes vi) is a standard editor on almost any Linux machine, so if I am ever working on a server if a VM, I would need to know/use Vim keybinds. That made Vim a more useful tool for me to learn at the time, as I could use the skills both on my machine and anywhere else.
I kinda like Helix, I just don't really know what's the point of it. Some of the Kakoune bindings are marginally better than the vim default but any efficency I might get with it I instantly lose when trying to re-learn things or getting confused when I hop on a vim terminal on an other machine.
Kind of the same with the editor, it's like a 'batteries included vim' but I can just get that with a really light vim config and not mess up my workflow.
I guess it's might be cool if you are getting into it as your first modal editor but even then, if you want to use other stuff or need to use some different tools getting a vim extension will probably be easier than getting a Kakoune one.
I'm still a fan of turbo, Nano on steroids
I sometimes play around with Helix and I almost always have a good time, but there are too many vim features that I have integrated in my workflow that there isn't any good equivalent to in Helix. I use ex commands, the quickfix list, snippets, the fugitive plugin and just little custom commands and mappings that I've accumulated. I don't see myself switching to any editor full time that doesn't have a replacement for most of these features, but Helix is very nice and fun to use occasionally.
I love Helix! It's pretty much replaced Vim for me, which was previously my preferred editor for quick changes, as opposed to loading up VSCode for when I'm putting in some sustained work.
Helix required a small amount muscle memory change, but nothing major, and in return I have a text editor which, due to sensible defaults, is exactly the same on all of my devices. I don't need to mess around with plugins (Vim plugins are fun, mind, but it's kind of a waste of time if Helix meets my needs out of the box.)
Permanently Deleted
Starter kits for vim/emacs IMO are a band-aid on the fundamental problem with them - poor default settings for the majority of use cases. I do think that an editor that takes the out the box experience is sorely needed in the cli editor space that helix fills quite nicely.
The big problems with starter kits is they are more fiddly to install - often require you to
curl | bashsome random script. They tend to mess around with your users config files in ways that you don't always expect. And they require you to keep up to date a large amount of plugins that sometimes end up breaking for various reasons. All of this adds some friction to new users.Yes less friction than creating the configs and fetching the plugins yourself as you need to in vim/emacs. But helix remove all that fiction by just including all people expect from a modern editor from the start.
So I think it does a disservice to discount it completely just because starter kits can do a similar thing after you manage to get them installed.
> but that’ll crawl to a halt as more packages depend on behavior you want to change.
I am not sure what you mean by this?