It seems to be a decent editor. I did not like the kak config files and the syntax it uses for some reason. That’s one of the main reasons I stayed away from it. Gonna check again to see if anything changed.
Maybe I have Kakoune Stockholm syndrome but I actually like the syntax of it's config/script files.
- The "kakscript language" is really quite minimalist. This makes it easy to remember and extremely consistent. It is designed to serve as a "glue" language rather than a fully powered language.
- To write plugins you have to work with kakscript and (Posix) shell script (bash, dash etc.) or a basic shell script that in turn works with a program written in another language (Perl, Python, Rust etc.). It's difficult to explain on HN but the kakoune<->outside world integration is one of the nicest I've seen. There is very little ceremony and you can be up and running really quickly.
- The creator of Kakoune is very reluctant to add more features to kakscript. While languages around us quickly accrue features and syntax, keeping kakscript limited means that you are forced to write more complicated code in languages that have been designed to be truly general purpose and not in kakscript