From VS Code to Helix | Hacker News Reader

From VS Code to Helix

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256 pointstodsacerdoti135 comments

> Being a lazy person, I never bothered looking up VS Code shortcuts. Because the learning curve for Helix is slightly steeper, you have to learn those shortcuts that make moving around feel so easy.

This doesn't make sense: if you were truly lazy, you wouldn't spend any effort learning a more complicated app, you'd simply not switch!

> with a few knobs for minor preferences. I am subject to choice paralysis, so making me configure an editor before I’ve even started editing is the best way to tank my productivity.

There are a couple of hundreds of options https://docs.helix-editor.com/editor.html and even more hundreds of keybinds https://docs.helix-editor.com/keymap.html to reconfigure, so you can knob yourself to death with Helix just like with any other configurable app. And the way out is the same as with vim - just pick someone else who has done it and has published the results before dying and use those!

> And the way out is the same as with vim - just pick someone else who has done it

I think the crucial thing here is that most people don't do it, because it works out of the box. You can change any of the keybindings and any of a few hundred settings if you want, but the defaults are good, so you don't have to. My helix config sets the theme and soft-wrap and that's about it.

In what way do vim default keybinds not work vs Helix's since they seem to be very similar (outside of the whole selection-first behavior inversion)?

In general, I agree that good defaults is the way to go, and vim is worse here (except for the theme, helix's default is bad), though again, the alternative isn't a many knobs paralysis, but a better starting set.

Not sure this is what the OP had in mind but in my experience Helix just ships with more keybinds than bare vim/nvim. Many of the nice keybinds shipped by LazyVim that I can't live without now (symbol search, LSP jumps, treesitter navigation etc) work out of the box in Helix.

Right, the extra basics!

Oh, vim's keybindings are fine. But vim is missing LSP, completion, file pickers / fuzzy finding, surround operations, easymotion jumps, and displaying buffers in the tab line. Those need to be added with plugins.

That's what's clogging up my init.lua, not keybindings. I'm glad I can adjust keybindings in both helix and vim. It's the plugins I resent, and with helix, these features are bundled in.

As a long time user of both Emacs (since 18.52) and Neovim and now Helix, I find your last assertion to be false. While it is true that there are many options (though not as many as either Emacs or Neovim), in Helix you cannot write code or install someone else's code to modify your editor. In the past I've spent a good amount of time trying out, integrating, and debugging various packages for Neovim and Emacs. In Helix I might try a new option setting, but the time involved is minuscule compared to what you might spend customizing other editors.

Just because your current customization needs are primitive in Helix doesn't mean that the potential isn't there!

> might try a new option setting

What about trying to change all the keybinds to suit your emacs/vim needs? What about tweaking hundreds of colors in editor theme?

> in Helix you cannot write code or install someone else's code to modify your editor.

But this is planned, so if only code tickles your fancy, then yeah, you'd have to wait for the full rabbit hole customization potential to appear.

I use NeoVim, not Helix, but I think it's more about sane defaults then the amount of customization. Out of the box NeoVim is just a basic modal text editor and not much more. You have to dive in and start configuring to get the real power out of it.

Helix does a lot of the heavy lifting for you.

Also, as a side note, I feel like trying to use someone else's config in NeoVim is a path to madeness.

Ya, I found the author's justifications for decisions pretty unconvincing.

Of course VSCode keybindings aren't great, but there are excellent Vim keybindings for VSCode, and that's the only thing about Vim that really matters. There are even experimental Helix keybindings for VSCode, and that's the only thing about Helix that really matters. Everything else is just commodified IDE functionality, and VSCode does that best.

And sure, Microsoft is not the kind of company I want to be entirely reliant on. But VSCode is MIT-licensed. There are already tons of forks for various purposes. Switching from VSCode to Helix for this reason is sort of like switching from Chrome to Lynx because you don't like Google. Why not just use Chromium, or Brave? With the level of adoption and support for VSCode, you can bet on well-supported forks popping up the moment Microsoft does anything truly destructive with it.

I mean, if you just want to try out and learn Helix, that's great, but the usability and morality pretense is distracting.

Helix and other new editors (kakoune comes to mind) always appealed to me because they seemed to have slightly more intuitive approaches to editing than vim, but I just don't think I can ever switch, purely because vim just exists everywhere I need it. It (or vi) is installed on practically every system I ever touch by default, and almost every IDE/editor under the sun supports vim keybinds either natively or via well-maintained plugins.

It's the same problem with keyboard layouts: I'm sure I could learn to be slightly faster on dvorak/colemak, but nothing beats the convenience of always having guaranteed access to qwerty, everywhere I go.

That keyboard layout is a great analogy. Maybe I would have tried Helix in my early twenties, but I’m too old for that now (30s lol).

I was on sublime text for the last 12 years. I made the switch to helix and although I missed some features, it's been a great change. I never could get into the vim bindings, but helix's defaults are great and I don't need to go plugin hunting in order to make the editor functional.

There's missing features I really want, but they'll be added eventually. Git blame in line, some scripting support, better find-replace across a project and not just the opened buffers.

Just give it a try for a week or two straight. No using your other editors. Cold turkey. You'll be surprised at how quickly you'll relearn. It took me about three weeks using it full time to get decent. The first day or so were brutal.

This is what is keeping me from trying Helix in a serious way. I don't want to learn slightly distinct vi-like keybindings and mess up my muscle memory.

same -- I wish Helix would just have a full vi-compatible mode, it would probably be enough to get me to switch

the other thing for me is lack of the GitHub Copilot extension. I am far too used to having tab-complete. there's some effort for Helix extensions to handle this but it's not close to on-par last time I checked

Ask and you shall receive

https://github.com/usagi-flow/evil-helix

I've tried evil helix and it is reasonable close to Vim, but still not quite the same (I don't remember but was running into several slight differences, which were causing enough adjustment that I gave up)

But why then switch?

from neovim to helix? I would prefer the configuration simplicity (while my neovim config is fairly stable and straightforward, it can be annoying to update) and better out-of-the-box defaults. I’d also be a lot more personally interested in contributing to the Rust codebase of Helix if I ever did run into bugs or features

I have to agree. It is too similar to vim, yet it is not vim.... I dont get what is the value proposition here. I mean I feel helix is just stripped off SpaceVim ????

It's more intuitive, and some key binding are using home letters instead of symbols making it easier to reach

My favorite one: "ggdG" didn't work no Helix;

But more importantly,it reflects the reality that although they bear some resemblance, the design logic of vi and Helix are actually fundamentally different.

In helix that's %d (select-buffer, then delete). The selection-then-action design for helix is showing it's difference to vi, which is action-on-movement.

But Vim has visual-mode, which is select-then-action too.

There's a mode for that!

not really, vim's visual mode always extends selection, while in Helix the base mode selects with your base commands so you can act on the selection, but it doesn't extend to the next one. For example, moving by 2 words only selects the 2nd one, not both like in Visual mode. (although in this specific case of selecting everything this difference isn't visible)

The details are different, but they're both select-then-act. Admittedly, I've never used Helix, but I don't see how what you've described is a game changer. Surely, at least sometimes, what you want to do is exactly what visual-mode provides: explicitly select a region, using the combined movement of any available operator, and then act on that region.

> at least sometimes

Surely you understand the difference between sometimes and all the other times? This is a game changer for all those other times. Otherwise helix has a similar extending selection mode like visual

> This is a game changer for all those other times.

Is it though? I honestly don't understand what the big deal is. The original contention was that the benefit was in offering selection-then-action, unlike Vi. And then when it's pointed out that Vim actually offers selection-then-action as well, there is a new assertion that it's the particular WAY that Helix offers selection-then-action that is key.

To my mind, selection-then-action is provided by Vim if you want it. Maybe it's a few extra keystrokes sometimes, because it's not the default mode, as it is in Helix, but the main concept (ability to think in object-then-verb) is available in both, if that's the way you prefer to think.

> I honestly don't understand what the big deal is.

Honestly, you't not even trying to

> To my mind, selection-then-action is provided by Vim if you want it.

Ok, let your mind be content with ignoring the difference that I've just explained. By the way, you can also trivialize vim as "it's just a fewer keystrokes sometimes to do the same as in notepad, what's the big deal?"

> Honestly, you't not even trying to

Why do you think that? I've been listening to what you say. But again, you haven't exactly proven that operating on the single-most-recent movement (which as I understand it, also defines the selection) is the thing that you want to operate on the most often, rather than the convenience of being able to use the flexibility of multiple movements to define a selection.

Anyway, many people do claim that an editor isn't the most important thing, and that thinking takes a lot more time than the operation itself, and that therefore Notepad would often be sufficient. What those people don't really appreciate is the ability to operate on multiple lines at once, not a single selection, but across vast swathes of the text being edited. When your thinking is done, and needs to be applied to every single line of the file, you'd much rather have Vim than Notepad. But in such a case Helix wouldn't offer much, if any, advantage over Vim.

You seem emotionally attached to this in a way that my skepticism provokes, so we can drop the debate. People should use whatever they prefer; no harm done.

The value proposition is multi-cursor editing, which is very nice

Eh. I've used a couple of different keyboard layouts and different keyboards and I can still use regular keyboards and layouts just fine.

It's just a matter of practice, which admittedly might be too much effort for little gain. I still use Neovim and I don't see myself ever using Helix or Kakoune.

It's a classic switching cost problem, to make it worth switching the effort either needs be below a threshold or the outcome has to be much better otherwise people won't switch - i.e. a killer feature/features.

> I'm sure I could learn to be slightly faster on dvorak/colemak, but nothing beats the convenience of always having guaranteed access to qwerty, everywhere I go.

Colemak/Dvorak is not about speed, but about comfort and avoiding RSI (though I would place the actual layout somewhere far down on the list, a proper ergonomic KB is top priority). Also, in my ~8 years on Colemak lack of access to it was a problem exactly 0 times. I don't type books on other people's computers, and if I would, typing blind on a keyboard I am not used to is anyway a hopeless endeavor.

And regarding availability, Colemak is now included in Windows 11, which makes it available out of the box in all 3 major OS's. Also, Colemak is an easy way to upgrade comfort in cases where you can't change the keyboard, like a laptop or shared computer.

Awesome to hear! Many organizations are restrictive with what's allowed to be installed on the computer, so this will be awesome. In one project I'm getting upgraded from Windows 10 to 11 any day now. Will be great to be able to use Colemak there as well.

> avoiding RSI

I tried all manner of keyboards over the years, and in my opinion, none of them solve RSI. I'm now back to a standard qwerty for the same reason as OP - they're just immediately available everywhere.

What did help my no-longer-existent RSI was simple - I don't rest my wrists any more like I was taught in high school typing class (by an instructor that would whack our hands with a ruler if we were caught resting our wrists).

I do have a bit of De Quervain's Tenosynovitis from the mouse, but I'm solving that with one of those hand stretchers that hook to your fingers and provide resistance when opening the hand. 100 reps a day (25x4) and I haven't really felt it in weeks. Turns out that working out the muscles opposite to the ones you think is the key (therapy putty did nothing).

I've tried a lot of keyboards over the years – ergonomic ones, such KA2 and Glove80 (now) absolutely did solve my RSI issues. Pain may have many issues, such joints, posture problems (pinching nerves in shoulders/elbow) but getting a proper chair and ergonomic split keyboard is still my number 1 advice. Also more sport, if it is not too severe.

Going to a doctor should also be high on the list, but unfortunately, I have yet to see one willing to do a proper diagnosis. My experience there is more than mixed, so you have to experiment yourself.

I too have had positive experience switching layouts for RSI (cubital tunnel specifically). While I am a bit skeptical on some of the more subtle claims by ergonomic enthusiasts, simply being more intentful around wrist posture seems to do me wonders. It may be more of a case where engaging in the niche is serving some broader truth, but I too directly associate my related journey to funny looking keyboards!

FWIW, all a doctor did for me was affirm my self-diagnosis and life-style adjustments. Surgery in this area looked quite grim on my last purview so I am not sure a doctor would serve much for most in this regard.

Personally I started getting wrist pain 2 or 3 years ago. I have been using Colemak anyway for more than 15 years - my original reason for switching was because the German QWERTZ layout I grew up with is not very programming friendly, symbols like []<>{}/\ are hidden away behind hard to type chords. I found as a nice side benefit that my typing speed increased by 20-30 or so WPM... I did also have typing classes in school, so it is not simply because I started paying more attention to learning how to type with the new system.

After switching to a split keyboard my pain went away, and I think I learned that at least for me it was caused by exactly these symbols - on both US QWERTY and Colemak when you constantly type [];:{}| and so on, your pinky has to reach over to do it. At least for me that meant contorting my hand a bit to reach over. On my split keyboard all the symbols are behind a layer on the home row, and I barely use the pinky for anything, which fixes the issue. I also learned to hover while switching to the split keyboard, but that did nothing for my wrist pain when going back to my laptop's built in keyboard - after a full day of programming there the pain is back.

> on both US QWERTY and Colemak when you constantly type [];:{}| and so on, your pinky has to reach over to do it. At least for me that meant contorting my hand a bit to reach over. On my split keyboard all the symbols are behind a layer on the home row, and I barely use the pinky for anything, which fixes the issue.

On a completely standard rectangular-block keyboard, I don't use pinkies to type. Actually, I do use my left pinky to hit left shift. But that's it.

There is a subset of split keyboard layouts which solve for this by moving the modifiers to the thumb area, which is often void when a keyboard is split. Quite a pleasure to use and has much less buy-in than QWERTY alternatives.

Maybe my hands are small, but to type []|\+= and not use my pinky I would either have to move my entire hand over or contort it even more to use my ring finger

Move your hand.

I find that just going from a membrane keyboard to a physical key switch keyboard with bump that it helps a lot... I type relatively lightly. I really like the original buckling spring keyboards from Unicomp, but others around me prefer me using my Cherry MX Brown switch keyboards which are relatively close.

The physical bump helps you type without bottoming out with practice it helps a lot with RSI, at least from my N:1 experience.

Do you have any opinions on ergoKB? I've begun to notice some pain, not in my wrists, but in my upper forearms and am thinking about something to fix that.

> typing blind on a keyboard I am not used to is anyway a hopeless endeavor.

Sounds like you’re a special case then. Most people can type fine on any qwerty keyboard. And your willingness to turn a blind eye to pretty major annoyances makes it seem like you’re trying to justify the effort you’ve put into Colemak. Even if you aren’t doing that, you’ll get more mileage out of just admitting that it’s annoying to have to use another keyboard.

> And your willingness to turn a blind eye to pretty major annoyances makes it seem like you’re trying to justify the effort you’ve put into Colemak

Nah, I know vim, meow, emacs keybindings but mostly use boon. I am also able to use my zoo of keyboards in the drawer without any problem, including Model100, KA2 and Glove80. Not everyone is limited by difficulty of learning a skill. There was absolutely no reason to keep qwery and staggered keyboard skills sharp, so I did let it go. Q.E.D.

> I'm sure I could learn to be slightly faster on dvorak/colemak

The speed is about the same. The big colmak win for me was that my hands/arms didn't ache after long typing sessions. Ergonomics and not getting repetitive motion injuries matter to me more than compatibility (though I can still type in qwerty even if it's slower these days).

> I'm sure I could learn to be slightly faster on dvorak/colemak, but nothing beats the convenience of always having guaranteed access to qwerty, everywhere I go.

Citation needed. Of my 2 friends that have tried, neither have been able to reach their 'standard' typing speed after 1+ years of dvorak. Maybe they didn't try hard enough?

> Citation needed.

No, not needed.

This is not an HN comment posting a subjective opinion, not a scientific work that requires real, or a Wikipedia article that requires any citation.

It's not an HN comment, not a scientific work, not a Wikipedia article. So what is it?

Sorry, had to match your level of pedantery.

I switched from Qwerty to Dvorak in my 20s, and now from Vim to Helix in my 30s. Both transitions were rough for a couple of weeks, but honestly less difficult than expected. Neither choice turned me into a 10x developer, but neither one has ever caused a problem that I cared about either.

Do you spend a lot of time on systems that you don't control? Dvorak discourages other people from helping themselves to my keyboard, which is honestly worth more to me than being able to go the opposite direction.

> being able to go the opposite direction

I bet you could learn to "switch" if you really cared to. Reminds me of the reverse-steering bicycle video from SmarterEveryDay. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MFzDaBzBlL0

As an Emacs user it annoys me to no end when I find myself using a system without a Vi variant. Not having Emacs available is fine, I know where to find it if I really need it, not having Dvorak is fine, hunt-and-peck is usually good enough; but not having Vi means I need to do a ton of sedding, catting, heading, and tailing which gets to be a chore after a while (almost as bad as using nano).

What's so bad about nano that you'd use sed, cat, head, and tail to do minor edits on a text file instead of just using nano?

> nothing beats the convenience of always having guaranteed access to qwerty, everywhere I go.

(less so for keyboard layout since it's harder to fix in other machines) but the ergonomics of your 99% use cases - using your own keyboard/your own editor config with 1% awkwardness when you can't copy a config beats the health-hazardous use 100% of the time.

> via well-maintained plugins

so those can read your vim config and maintain your better keybinds, right?

I don't understand. VIM has a visual mode too if you want it. Just press `v`, do your selection and then operate on the selection. But frankly, the operator-motion is better, esp if you have repetitive editing to do. It is easier to repeat the same or combine the into a macro.

Feel less efficient with Helix motions:

https://www.reddit.com/r/HelixEditor/comments/1h5qqg7/i_feel...

> I'm sure I could learn to be slightly faster on dvorak/colemak

As near as I can tell, people generally type at similar speeds regardless of layout. If you're aiming for speed typing [1], I can see it making a difference, but chances are you're not going to see much of a difference. I type on an alpha-thumb layout (Hands Down Vibranium, the R key is under my left thumb) on an ergo keyboard. It's like using a fountain pen versus a cheap ballpoint or a nice mechanical keyboard vs a membrane keyboard. The experience is nicer but it's not a fundamentally different process. Being on a weird setup, I was concerned about "what if my keyboard breaks", "what if I'm on a public computer", etc and the solution is just to not forget qwerty. I use the laptop keyboard every other day or so for something short like a comment and it's fine.

What my personal setup does let me do is have my wrists in a neutral position with my arms resting on chair armrests and no active muscle effort. Between the efficient layout and small keyboard I never need to move my hands at all. This means that my wrists are just as well positioned after 12 hours as they are at the start and that's what has been letting my stress injuries recover.

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/KeyboardLayouts/comments/1lfu1xt/fi...

> of always having guaranteed access to qwerty everywhere I go.

You haven't travelled far, obviously.

Maybe it is not for people that need to switch. For me it is first editor of this kind and I do not need to fight anything.

I used vim for about one year before switching to kakoune.

Using vim motions in Intellij or just vim hasn't been a problem for me at all. I don't use very advanced shortcuts (the most complicated motions I ever use are ciw and the likes). Even though they are quite different (ciw is <alt>iwc in kakoune) I adjust to them quite easily. Kakoune has also helped me get better at using vim because there is quite some overlaps that are more discoverable in kakoune (<alt>i summons a clippy that shows all the different objects you can select)

This and to be honest no small amount of sunk cost are keeping me with NeoVim. I spent so much time learning how to get the damn thing to work the way I want I just can't bring myself to leave lol

You can try evil helix [1], so your muscle memory won't be affected.

[1] https://github.com/usagi-flow/evil-helix

> Microsoft is also based in the USA, and the political climate over there makes me want to depend as little as possible on American tools. I know that’s a long, uphill battle, but we have to start somewhere.

I miss the days when we had militant, but more entertaining zealots like Stallman. Whatever else you can say about his antics, Stallman was comitted. And that craziness wrapped back around to being entertaining.

Now we just get whatever this is - basically the equivalent of someone declaring they're going to try being vegetarian by not eating the tips of chicken wings anymore. Like dude, fork Vscode and start hosting it on your own custom vc system that was hacked together as a side project.

Where's the fire and passion behind the resistance?

I'm not sure if this counts as an act of "resistance", but either way its value isn't dependent upon the amount of faffing involved.

I recently learned about the whole “GNU/Linux” naming thing and got a good kick out of it

https://www.gnu.org/gnu/gnu-linux-faq.en.html

I've only ever read the meme/copypasta, so thanks for sharing. This is much more reasonable than I was expecting, I'm convinced.

> Where's the fire and passion behind the resistance?

The working class are exhausted and a paycheck away from losing their homes. People don't have the time or energy to fight back for privacy/sovereignty/whatever inconveniences those in power. Stallman grew up privileged, went to the best universities at the best possible time and worked in academia. He had plenty of time to devote to political causes.

A majority of people in tech jobs have more than enough privilege to fight back, but instead they get cozy with their Microsoft editor, using the Microsoft backed LLM, pushing code to their Microsoft code forge, updating info on their Microsoft professional networking profile and publishing packages on Microsoft's package manager.

Let's face it-- the passion and resistance is nearly dead. There's a few of us left. Say what you want about Stallman, at least the man stood for something.

I used Helix for a couple of days and really liked it for the most part. However, I would sometimes encounter a small, simple thing that I do without thinking in VS Code but just did not know the command for in Helix. I would look it up, think, "Sweet, that's efficient" and move on. This kept happening and finally I was in a situation where I just needed to move fast and did not have time to investigate how to do it in Helix so I switched back and... never returned.

It was a learning curve issue for me, not a functionality issue. I'll probably return at some point (like when the EOY season becomes slower and I have more time to explore) but for now I'm back to cruising in VS Code.

I have a similar story but with neovim (and for the same reason as the author; growing unease with big tech). Tried and failed to make the switch a few times but made a concerted effort to stick with it throughout a specific project and now it’s second nature. I found it useful to research idiomatic (n)vim ways of doing things whenever I’d get frustrated or feel I’d be doing something more quickly in VSCode and commit them to memory by using new commands a few times over. Right now I’d say search/replace is the only thing that’s still not as ergonomic for me in vim as it is in Code. What I do is visually highlight my search phrase, hit asterisk then :%s//replaced - I learned that you can omit the search pattern using this technique.

Anyway nvim and helix are both amazing and terminal editors are both cool and sexy, so why wouldn’t you? ;)

Woah, how did I not know about that tip about omitting the search pattern? Love it and will be using that lots!

As a thank you, I'll leave you with the way I learned to search/replace, just to give you a slightly different flavour: asterisk, cgn ([c]hange [g]o [n]ext), type replaced, then . (period, to repeat) until I'm done.

Right back at you, that’s super neat!

Let me add my third way of doing this in vim:

    :%s/<CTRL-R><CTRL-W>/replacement/(gcn)

As you can guess <CTRL-W> invokes a special register that contains the "word" currently under the cursor.

Huh. I forgot about %s. I just search for a pattern and replace the first one manually. If there are fewer than ~5 occurrences, I'll just hit `n.` ~5 times and get them all. If there are more, I'll record a macro with `qqn.q`, then look at the occurence count in the bottom right corner (e.g. 50) and hit `50@q` to get them all. Sometimes the replacement text is non-constant, and this method allows for more flexibility with the recorded macro.

Sometimes it's funny to look around and see the strange local minimum of effort you've settled into.

I'm not sure I follow the argument being made here.

"I don't like vim as you need to install plugins to make it work"

"helix is a dumb editor, so it needs a language server."

Then they go and list the number of plugins they install. This seems to argue against what their main point

I now use VScode most of the time, however to me its a fancy VIM variant, because I'm so used to vim bindings.

I can and do use raw vim, although not for any serious programming recently. If I were then I'd have syntastic installed and possibly some more advanced linter.

However! If it makes them happy, then this is a good thing™.

The argument doesn't make sense, but I followed the exact same path. For me, Helix is genuinely just more enjoyable to use out of the box, so I felt more motivated to tune it to my liking.

I do almost all my development on JetBrains IDEs (Rust, Python, Kotlin). IME they are unmatched for giving you code insights and suggested fixes (combined with "click here to do that") out of the box. But they are absolute resource hogs and I don't trust that they (or their best features) will always remain free.

I've tried to get into neovim a few times. It's fine for basic editing and I use it a bit when I am ssh'd into a box without a graphical environment, or I'm just not bothered booting up a full IDE. But the UI still feels less intuitive to me than JetBrains, and by the time I've installed and configured the various plugins that should give me anything approaching JetBrains' functionality the whole setup feels very fragile, like it could break at any moment and I wouldn't easily be able to fix it. In the regard, Helix having more stuff OOTB feels like it could be a definite improvement.

I'm also on the jetbrains train, but I stopped using it for a while because they're sluggish. An editor's interface should never lock up, an editor should never have popups that demand focus, etc but both intellij and vs code do this.

At the moment I'm on VS Code again because Sublime Text isn't keeping up to date anymore (its ecosystem has mostly been dormant since 2014 or 2016) and Zed is still fully in development and doesn't have some of the extensions and tools that I sometimes use in VS Code.

If I were to go back to e.g. Java I'd probably use IntelliJ again, but then, the enterprise I work for would be shelling out for it.

I ended up switching to Zed after VS Code lost connection to my dev VM and locked up one too many times. I am not sure what the issue is- maybe the VM is just running out of memory and nuking the VSCode daemon? But either way, Zed has not had this problem at all.

I never had much problem with feeling VSCode was slow (outside of those lockups) but Zed surprised me by feeling actively fast. I do miss several extensions a lot though!

> I never had much problem with feeling VSCode was slow (outside of those lockups) but Zed surprised me by feeling actively fast.

well said. this is exactly how I felt too. when other folks ask why zed, and i tell them it's fast - i couldn't quite capture that feeling but this comment nails it.

Zed actively feels faster than VSCode or equivalent editors; but once you get comfortable with Zed's speed, it's hard to go back.

I had the same problem with pycharm, it was basically unusable on my Lenovo Yoga for anything more than text editing (so anything that actually makes pycharm interesting).

I don't know if it's just my hardware or some software issue, but I was very disappointed.

I've been using JetBrains IDEs for the last 11 years. Before that I used Emacs and Sublime Text. I've tried VSCode, Zed, and others. There's just no comparison on the code insights and code manipulation tools. LSP is far behind what JetBrains can do, although it's slowly catching up these days. I still use VSCode from time to time for other languages like Zig.

I've never experienced sluggishness, but, I also keep track of how much memory it's using and ensure I don't run low. It's clearly a huge resource hog, but I'm also glad for that. It's using all of my computers resources to analyze the code in amazing ways which help me develop fast. Emacs, Sublime Text, and others were all about typing speed. Fast development goes far beyond just typing speed.

> But they are absolute resource hogs and I don't trust that they (or their best features) will always remain free.

I use quite a few of their IDEs for various use cases (Java, .NET, Python, Go, JS projects and some DB interaction) and ended up just buying their ultimate pack. For individual use, it was like 360 EUR with VAT per year that went down to 216 EUR by year 3 of staying subscribed. Just so I wouldn't have to deal with any artificial limitations and could use all of their tools instead of some Frankenstein setup where I have to install all sorts of plugins into IntelliJ.

Their AI tools are also pretty decent (Junie was lovely to use, despite the rate limits), the idea behind the free Fleet editor was also cool but it kinda sucked in comparison to VSC. That said, if the JetBrains IDEs ever get enshittified, I'm throwing them into the trash and moving over to just VSC with a frickload of plugins and AI slop coding to make up for the lack of comparably good refactoring tools and such. Until then, I'm okay with paying for their software, same as I pay for MobaXTerm and support FreeFileSync etc., I guess my point is that I largely view them as a commercial product and wouldn't count on that much being or remaining free.

25 years ago, naive me thought we'd eventually figure out how to use text editors as components within other applications like IDEs. A protocol would evolve to let IDEs and editors work together. The same protocol would allow every text box in a browser to be your favorite editor.

LSP is much more practical, but much less than I hoped for.

I was using it for 10 years, and now I'm using Helix and occasionally open JetBrains tools to do some refactoring.

I just hate the idea of opening two IDEs because my work repo is in Go and Python. Also, the IDEs are not getting faster, only slower.

Helix is great if you just want something fast that gets out of your way. If you want plugins and integrations and other magic, it's probably not for you. I used Vim for the past decade, because it fits the way my brain works. Helix captures that same spirit, but with some polish and friendliness that can only come from starting fresh, and abandoning years of entrenched design decisions.

Helix is a fantastic terminal-based editor. I would rather type in mittens than use a GUI editor. If that resonates with you, maybe give it a try. If you love your GUI, I don't think Helix will be the thing that changes your mind.

The best part of this article for me is the link to these well made 3rd party docs for helix.

https://helix-nikita-revencos-projects.vercel.app/start-here...

A few days ago I was randomly reading about ed (after stumbling with the 'ed is the standard editor' joke) and reflecting over how much historical baggage we accumulate in computing.

Commands like a for appending text are unchanged from the teletype era, which are so old that most people don't know computers used printers as an output before screens!

It's pushed me to learn about projects that try to move beyond acumulated baggage and rethink principles.

I've been taking a look at Nushell for example, and even though I was initially skeptical of Helix because of how universal vim commands are, perhaps it's time to take a deeper look.

Come check out BABLR! https://github.com/bablr-lang https://discord.gg/NfMNyYN6cX

We'll have a major release announcement any day now, but we're looking hard at the accumulated baggage and we think we can lose a lot of that weight while giving people a level of power they never had before

> Commands like a for appending text are unchanged from the teletype era

I don't find these commands a historical baggage. They're quite useful even today. Also commands like A, I, P, O in vim are super-useful when recording macros (macros are easier to record and more robust because they less depend on the context where they would be run).

That "accumulated baggage" is though not entirely mostly knowledge and progress won through sweat and tears from many mistakes over many lifetimes.

There's a reason we moved on from paper tape to visual displays, and then from line editors to freeform buffer editors. We didn't abandon paper tape due to "baggage", we did it because it sucked and was inefficient.

Though certainly, I agree with studying and learning from history. It doesn't hurt to know how to use ed, especially since it doesn't take long to learn.

I used Vim for over 15 years. I then used NeoVim for a couple years.

I tried Helix for several months. I then tried VS Code for the first time and only lasted about eight weeks. I gave Zed a try but gave up because it required a GPU which my machine didn't have and there's a login button on the editor which I found ridiculous (I don't use GitHub, how am I supposed to log in). I then tried RustRover / JetBrains products for a few weeks.

Ultimately, I ended up back in Vim8 (default install on my LTS distro). I like to think I've given each editor a fair try.

1. Vanilla vim is just there and works. You can use it with or without plugins and it works great. The built in :make / compiler options are a viable alternative to lsp / linter plugins. Also, it has ctags support built in which works for dozens of languages. You can also use a linter/lsp plugin by adding to your optional plugins and simply do `:packadd vim-lsp` or whatever the plugin name is whenever you want to use it. It's literally a text editor, with optional plugins.

2. NeoVim is "plugin hell". It's an editor that people use as an IDE and require a dozen plugins to do so. You could use it like Vim (see above), but no one does that. I don't have any issues with NeoVim as a tool, but the community and "influencers" are annoying to me.

3. Helix was a nice IDE out of the box, no plugins required. Ultimately I found the different key mappings to be annoying for me (15+ years of vim muscle memory). It's not a bad alternative if you want the "IDE experience" in the terminal. It's certainly better than stringing 24 plugins together and hoping none of them are ever compromised.

I won't discuss the other editors or IDES. I don't want to hurt anyone's feelings :)

Helix boast itself as a no config tool, but you have to find a lsp, installl it, edit a toml to activate it. I dont think we can call that "config less". Success would be something like LazyVim but without the nagging of updates each time you open it.

I am whole off the vim (&friends) trend but my 2c-

The helix situation is still miles better for up and running asap compared to dancing with files/lua on lazyvim. Just having to refer to docs to install a plugin, writing sane remaps etc eats up time. If you really just speedrun everything under an hour good for you. But for the rest, a lsp is a one package manager install away (even on windows scoop seems to have become the de facto), editing a toml is much easier than fiddling with the lua api/vimscript "just" to set some variables.

(Not a helix user though I have tried both vim/nvim/helix)

The only problem for me was the keybindings work good unless my vim instincts kick in where I become slow. The other one was lack of plugins.

I don't know about LazyVim but my LSP configuration in Neovim is really simple:.

Use Mason to install the LSP server (just type :LspInstall or use the Mason UI) that will then activate automatically and reuse an existing configuration from lsp-config.

No tinkering or configuration needed.

I agree with all you said. Its an improvment over nvim situation. I still think for common languages like python and markdown lsp should be setup by default. I am not sure if i am willing to forget all the muscle memory I have just yet. Also I miss being able to ZZ to exit my file

I think most people in the target audience for either editor wouldn't mind a bit of tinkering. The difference is in basically building your own setup from the ground up with plugins and config files vs starting with a reasonably featureful setup OOTB that you can then tweak to your liking.

I use LazyVim and it works pretty well. But whenever I want to change some small aspect of its behaviour it takes a while to get familiar with the right part of the configuration. And if an update were to break it tomorrow I'm not sure how easily I could put it back together.

I'm a mostly happy helix user - but I'm still struggling to get debugging to work - both with ruby/rails and typescript/node (Adonis).

Apparently DAP protocol support has been merged - but I find the documentation lacking, and afaik for typescript/javascript it won't work out of the box, as helix needs a pointers to the dap server (and that can't simply be in PATH)?

How are everyone debugging with Helix?

https://github.com/helix-editor/helix/discussions/9269

Helix's features look very cool, but I could not switch to it because of this bug [0]. It has been open since May 2022 and it is still not fixed. Basically you can't exit insert mode with a key combination like `jk`. Four years feels like a long time for such a basic bug. I will stick to NeoVim for now.

0. https://github.com/helix-editor/helix/issues/2612

Check out the docs! They show you how to do exactly that: https://docs.helix-editor.com/remapping.html#minor-modes

Yeah, the docs show different keys combination, like `jk` or `jh` etc (even with the bug described in the issue). You can't use the same key like I am used to (just `jj`), because there is no timeout between characters.

First time hearing about the Helix editor, and I gotta say — it really caught my eye. I’m not super familiar with Vim, but I’m definitely gonna install Helix and give it a try.

Just yesterday I think I reached the breaking point with vim. Been using vi and derivatives for 40 years, but the amount of tweaking to get a usable setup is really annoying me. I've gotten to the point where LSP is a must have.

Yesterday I was trying to switch my Astro VIM setup from using black to using "ruff format", which lead me down the path of installing astro from scratch, re-configuring it for my "must haves", and then trying again to get my formatter switched to ruff. I reinstalled because the docs looked like there may be a new way to do it since my last install 6 months ago.

The documentation for Astro VIM is really incomplete. Claude was fairly helpful, maybe Claude Code would be better, since it'll have the context of my exact configs rather than Claude giving me 3-5 options for making the change.

I've got a helix cheatsheet on my desk that I had Claude make me ~3 months ago. I started my work journal in helix this morning, but the install on that system must be broken because I couldn't even exit insert mode, pressing ESC did nothing.

I'm at the point where I think vim is a great library for building a text editor, but nobody has built a great text editor in it yet. I really liked LunarVim but that got abandoned for reasons I don't fully understand.

I'd also argue that VS Code is not open source - at least not the version that 98% of people run. If you download VS Code from almost anywhere (and are not using Codium) then you are subject to the licence terms at https://code.visualstudio.com/license which says you may not:

- reverse engineer, decompile or disassemble the software, or otherwise attempt to derive the source code for the software except and solely to the extent required by third party licensing terms governing use of certain open source components that may be included in the software;

- remove, minimize, block or modify any notices of Microsoft or its suppliers in the software;

- use the software in any way that is against the law;

- share, publish, rent or lease the software, or provide the software as a stand-alone offering for others to use.

For me personally I use VSCode + Vim Extension and I find the combo quite perfect. I've been using VSCode pretty much my entire career and with the vim extension I can make things like editing very "vim like" but still be able to break out and do other things the "vscode way"

Helix is a beautifully made editor. Looking forward for it to have scriptability and extensibility.

I went from VS Code to NeoVim and can’t be happier. Not saying that VS Code isn‘t a good product. It‘s actually everything you need in an editor/ ide. But it’s way too heavy for my taste. I made the transition to the terminal for my dev workflow. WezTerm, mux and tmux, neovim as editor, lazygit as git client, yazi for file navigation: I absolutely love how streamlined my process is.

Wonderful times with lots of options.

I've tried Neovim, but still use VSCode because everything either works out of the box or takes 2 clicks to install an extension for and things like drag and drop into the file explorer or the remote extension make it really quick to use.

The only other real GUI contender I've seen is Jetbrains's IDEs (the free educational plan is great) but having seperate IDEs for different languages gets a bit annoying if you have multi language projects (e.g. a Rust backend hosting a Typescript frontend)

See https://herecomesthemoon.net/2025/06/i-like-helix/, Helix is a very different experience from neovim, and basically everything works out of the box with no configs or setup required.

It's quite impressive how everything just works and how easy onboarding is.

You don't really need the different IDEs. For example, you can install the Rust plugin and the TypeScript plugin in IntelliJ Ultimate, without needing RustRover and WebStorm.

Does CLion not contain the JS tools? The other have them.

I really, really want to use Helix but I want to share bindings with VSCode/IntelliJ, and all the plugins that promise them have lots quirks, exceptions and various gaps. I know it's never gonna be 100%, but sometimes simple stuff is broken (x to select line in Helix, selected line+newline in the latest plugin I tried).

I'm switching from VSCode as well. I love Helix's (and Kakoune's) editing model centered around selections rather than motions. I can see what I'll operate on interactively.

I still use VSCode when navigating complex codebase changes, just because of the visual file tree. I hope to fully switch over soon.

I try to get on helix from time to time but the lack of built in terminal emulator stops me every time. What is the suggested story of going from location in compiler output in a different tab to the editor? In vs code it is just one ctrl click away.

Since it is a tui editor, a terminal split

The question is less about the split but about making my terminal (kitty) navigate into hx when I click on locations in compiler output?

Helix has its limitations — but I use it for speed. No other editor I’ve tried is as nimble.

> Helix is a “stupid” text editor. It doesn’t know much about what you’re typing. But it supports Language Servers that implement the Language Server Protocol.

By that measure, isn't eg VS code also a "stupid" editor?

Helix is fine but Zed is perhaps the most similar Rust-based VS Code alternative.

Even better, Zed with Helix keybindings: https://zed.dev/docs/helix

helix is the reason I now believe all rust projects are doomed to fail

The article misses one important point. Helix is 100% immune against plugin supply chain attacks like GlassWorm.

I am joking of course. Helix is fantastic and I think it eventually will get a state-of-the-art safe plugin system. After a couple of attempts I made the permanent switch from neovim two moths ago. I don't think I'll ever go back.

Last i checked helix did not have a way to run commands and pipe results to something like quickfix. Is this a thing these days?

In Helix this is mostly meant to be mediated by language servers. That said, you can use `:pipe` and other commands to pass the current selection to arbitrary shell commands and do stuff with the output.

I just want to run a makefile command and pipe stuff to some sort of quickfix like thing. How is this related to a language server?

Does the author really not use any other vscode feature than lsp? What about e.g. gitlens or jupyter

There are pretty good terminal alternatives to gitlens - lazygit being the one I go to. I like it far more that gitlens.

Jupyter is harder, I haven't found anything that gets me there yet.

HELIX EVANGELISM STRIKE FORCE HERE LET'S GO

Why not Zed?!

The Helix mode in Zed is promising, but still nowhere near complete, and has a long way to go before it is as user-friendly as the Helix editor. For instance, the nice pop-up display of available commands. When I press “g” in Helix, I get a nice list of all the “goto” commands. This is very useful for discovering new features, and when you have forgotten something. This feature does not yet exist in Zed. And this is just one of many examples.

I’d do the same if they didn’t switch the vim bindings around. All that muscle memory to unlearn. Nope.

I went to Zed for this reason.

It's a shame Zed founders unapologetically take money from bigots: https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/discussions/36604

I had thoughts on this but deleted it many times so I dunno really but I guess of all the VCs to take money from... (or maybe this was the only one that would fund a text editor??)

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