Hacker News Reader

Comment by jsmailes | Hacker News Reader

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.

View on HN

> 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).

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'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...

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 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

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)

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

> 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?

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.

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

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

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

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...

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.

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.

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

You haven't travelled far, obviously.

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?

> 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.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com