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Comment by eikenberry | Hacker News Reader

An alternative to Neovim or VScode that might be worth checking out is Helix (https://helix-editor.com/). It is a Vim/Kakoune inspired editor that is really starting to hit its stride. I haven't used it extensively yet, but I'm testing using it for development now and am thinking of switching to it full time. It maintains the minimalism of (Neo)Vim while coming with a great builtin setup like VScode.

To get a feel for its development status I recommend reading their news post for their 23.03 release.. https://helix-editor.com/news/release-23-03-highlights/

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Helix is interesting but I don't really gel with its editing language (subject + verb instead of verb + subject like (n)vim's). Happy to discuss what I think is lacking in more detail, but basically: the premise of 'you can see what you're about to operate on before you do the action' is satisfied for me by visual mode, and I like macros better than multiple cursors. So I don't want a (subjectively) less efficient editing language for these features. I think I generally agree with the complaints in [1], with the addition that I don't want to have to chord (press shift in the case of Kakoune, I forget what helix does here) to extend a selection.

I wish they'd add a Vi mode. ;)

[1] https://github.com/noctuid/dotfiles/blob/master/emacs/editin...

I've seen that breakdown before and have skimmed it but didn't really find an analytical breakdown of why style X is better/worse than style Y for person Z very useful. Tools preferences are to personal and varying. It really depends on how it meshes with your style and the only way to really test that is to try it out.

Yeah, I agree-- I just happens that I personally resonate with most of these complaints (having tried both Kakoune and Helix a bit).

Helix is quite nice, with some sensible defaults and an easier setup. The keybindings take a bit of getting used to if you are coming from it with years of vim muscle memory, but kind of make more sense when you think about it (select+action vs action+select). It's still rough around the edges but one to keep an eye on.

Without any proper code completion integration (eg. Copilot), and no working plug-in system, Helix unfortunately falls short for my needs.

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