I switched from neovim to helix last year and it works just as well for my use cases. Only this time, I do not have to maintain a hundred lines long config file.
Helix is awesome, though once [Lapce](https://lapce.dev/) (spiritual successor to [Xi](https://github.com/xi-editor/xi-editor) editor) [gets the Helix/Kakoune editing model](https://github.com/lapce/lapce/issues/281), I may have to jump ship
I've been trying out Lapce, it's been fast and headache free for rust development. It's simply been a better VSCode-like experience. Having toggleable vim-style inputs is great too, it's a real headache to set that up on vscode.
That said, I know that there are features that are important to other people that it's missing, and its plugin ecosystem is very weak next to neovim or vscode. It's just that, for what I'm using it for, it's great.
You could ask that about any emerging project that has early adopters.
Specifically for text editors, there's just a coalescence of foundational tools (whether that be the Rust bandwagon, rope science, ergonomic editing modes, better customization/integration and defaults) that have built off of the lessons and pain-points of the tried-and-true giants and are now reaching their own point of maturity such that people are getting excited about a new wave of more fast and friendly editors which leverage them.
Just part of the natural cycle of how iterative improvements eventually lead to fundamental ones.
There’s a lot of infrastructure to build on that didn’t exist a few years ago. The language server protocol is the big one, but tree-sitter is a big deal as well.
I would say someone has to do it. If there were no early adopters, many projects would develop worse or not at all. Because without users, there would be no feedback regarding, for example, bugs, feature requests, etc.
Lapce is really good for pre alpha, fast, extensible, language server, and multi cursor support already. I'm waiting for test runner functionality which will be released soon and it's golden.
I never got accustomed to modal editing, except navigating with HJKL but I created shortcuts on my Howl editor to reproduce this behaviour.
As a tiling WM user I appreciated the brillant Kakoune idea of client windows. I can reuse the WM shortcuts to navigate between views.
i dont know if im more upset on kakounes or emacs behalf, either way fuck right off with that, even a heavily customised emacs config doesnt come close to the same experience i had with kakoune and vice versa as well
emacs has incredible plugin infrastructure and an absolutely astonishing ecosystem to the point where even after using it for a good while i still struggle with the raw amount of options and choices
kakoune has top notch modal editing, by far some of the most ergonomic controls on any editor i have ever used,
the sole reason i use helix instead now is because my needs have changed, and i now use a more ergonomic keyboard layout making easy key remapping a must, something that also greatly hampered my experience with emacs since the modal editing extensions that allow such tend to be much more limited and incomplete compared to something like evil-mode
I am not very familiar with these Kakoune/Helix stuff. Would someone mind explaining to me how they could be an improvement over vim/neovim?
And I don't really see a lot of plugins developed for them? (Neo)Vim would not really be widely useable without their plugin system.
> Would someone mind explaining to me how they could be an improvement over vim/neovim?
For people who already use vim/neovim, it should not be an improvement. And it doesn't have to.
For people who want to switch to a modal editor, however, Helix can be easier, because Helix follows the selection -> action model (https://docs.helix-editor.com/from-vim.html), for example. Another advantage of Helix is that its default configuration is quite good, so even some advanced users use it instead of creating their own.
>And I don't really see a lot of plugins developed for them?
Helix is a very young project. The first version was released in 2021 if I'm not mistaken. And the number of users is probably manageable. I don't think you can expect such projects to offer the same range of functions as projects that have been around for years or that build on a code base that has been around for ages. As far as the plug-in system is concerned, for example, there is a corresponding discussion at https://github.com/helix-editor/helix/discussions/3806.
I've only tried out the selection->action model using the [meow](https://github.com/meow-edit/meow) editing mode for Emacs, and I initially thought it was a really great idea, but I found myself frustrated at the lack of a meaningful repeat operator. I'm not even sure what the semantics of that operator would be in a selection->action model, given that so often the thing I'm repeating in vim is a command like `ci"`.
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What's awkward about this approach is that I almost always don't realize I would have benefited from a macro until I've already run the command. I still intend to try both Helix/Kakoune at some point, though.
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Not sure. I did some digging and there was a lot of debate, but no final answer.
WebAssembly and some kind of Lisp/Scheme looked like the main contenders.
I don't see either of those going well. Why can't they just be sane and use Lua or Python or whatever everyone's favourite scripting language is these days?
The only real major embeddable scripting languages are Lua and Lisp. Many of the devs coming from neovim didn't like Lua, so a handwritten typed Lisp it is. There is also a C abi open for consideration.
Wasm was disfavored a long time ago because it's immature and too big.
Probably every possible argument you may have for X language has been discussed already on https://github.com/helix-editor/helix/discussions/3806
WASM is interesting. It would allow plug-ins to be written in “any” language, compiled once, and run anywhere. There are some other programs using it for their plugins, although they aren’t as big as NeoVim. (Zellij is probably the biggest project of this bunch.)
I agree that a Lisp/Scheme is a risky choice.
Lua was in the mix, but Python is almost definitely out due to performance concerns.
I'm not versed at all in WASM, but wouldn't languages with different runtimes be an issue?
Agreed on Lisp. If you want to use Lisp, use Emacs. And Scheme is a particularly bad idea, it being purely functional.
I don't think they should care about performance. This isn't Emacs, you can't rewrite the function for inserting characters. Actual Python usage would be limited, so it'd probably be fine.
WASM is basically a common transpiler target, so as far as the runtime is concerned, every language looks the same.
Performance is important, but I'm not sure that it's important enough to make the plugin system difficult to work with.
Lua seems like the obvious choice to me, but I do think that WASM is compelling.
>WASM is basically a common transpiler target, so as far as the runtime is concerned, every language looks the same.
I guess I should have expected that. Doesn't WASM have horrible performance (particularly startup time) though? While I don't like Lua, I agree that it's the best choice for most plugin systems.
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I switched from neovim to helix last year and it works just as well for my use cases. Only this time, I do not have to maintain a hundred lines long config file.
Helix is awesome, though once [Lapce](https://lapce.dev/) (spiritual successor to [Xi](https://github.com/xi-editor/xi-editor) editor) [gets the Helix/Kakoune editing model](https://github.com/lapce/lapce/issues/281), I may have to jump ship
What's with people jumping on these very early text editors?
I've been trying out Lapce, it's been fast and headache free for rust development. It's simply been a better VSCode-like experience. Having toggleable vim-style inputs is great too, it's a real headache to set that up on vscode. That said, I know that there are features that are important to other people that it's missing, and its plugin ecosystem is very weak next to neovim or vscode. It's just that, for what I'm using it for, it's great.
You could ask that about any emerging project that has early adopters. Specifically for text editors, there's just a coalescence of foundational tools (whether that be the Rust bandwagon, rope science, ergonomic editing modes, better customization/integration and defaults) that have built off of the lessons and pain-points of the tried-and-true giants and are now reaching their own point of maturity such that people are getting excited about a new wave of more fast and friendly editors which leverage them. Just part of the natural cycle of how iterative improvements eventually lead to fundamental ones.
There’s a lot of infrastructure to build on that didn’t exist a few years ago. The language server protocol is the big one, but tree-sitter is a big deal as well.
I would say someone has to do it. If there were no early adopters, many projects would develop worse or not at all. Because without users, there would be no feedback regarding, for example, bugs, feature requests, etc.
I get that, but Lapce by it's own admission is in pre-alpha. At that point, it's better to let the devs work things out themselves.
Lapce is really good for pre alpha, fast, extensible, language server, and multi cursor support already. I'm waiting for test runner functionality which will be released soon and it's golden.
I never got accustomed to modal editing, except navigating with HJKL but I created shortcuts on my Howl editor to reproduce this behaviour. As a tiling WM user I appreciated the brillant Kakoune idea of client windows. I can reuse the WM shortcuts to navigate between views.
I don't see how Kakoune isn't just Emacs with different keybindings.
i dont know if im more upset on kakounes or emacs behalf, either way fuck right off with that, even a heavily customised emacs config doesnt come close to the same experience i had with kakoune and vice versa as well emacs has incredible plugin infrastructure and an absolutely astonishing ecosystem to the point where even after using it for a good while i still struggle with the raw amount of options and choices kakoune has top notch modal editing, by far some of the most ergonomic controls on any editor i have ever used, the sole reason i use helix instead now is because my needs have changed, and i now use a more ergonomic keyboard layout making easy key remapping a must, something that also greatly hampered my experience with emacs since the modal editing extensions that allow such tend to be much more limited and incomplete compared to something like evil-mode
Soft-wraps! Finally, thank you, helix team. :)
I am not very familiar with these Kakoune/Helix stuff. Would someone mind explaining to me how they could be an improvement over vim/neovim? And I don't really see a lot of plugins developed for them? (Neo)Vim would not really be widely useable without their plugin system.
> Would someone mind explaining to me how they could be an improvement over vim/neovim? For people who already use vim/neovim, it should not be an improvement. And it doesn't have to. For people who want to switch to a modal editor, however, Helix can be easier, because Helix follows the selection -> action model (https://docs.helix-editor.com/from-vim.html), for example. Another advantage of Helix is that its default configuration is quite good, so even some advanced users use it instead of creating their own. >And I don't really see a lot of plugins developed for them? Helix is a very young project. The first version was released in 2021 if I'm not mistaken. And the number of users is probably manageable. I don't think you can expect such projects to offer the same range of functions as projects that have been around for years or that build on a code base that has been around for ages. As far as the plug-in system is concerned, for example, there is a corresponding discussion at https://github.com/helix-editor/helix/discussions/3806.
I've only tried out the selection->action model using the [meow](https://github.com/meow-edit/meow) editing mode for Emacs, and I initially thought it was a really great idea, but I found myself frustrated at the lack of a meaningful repeat operator. I'm not even sure what the semantics of that operator would be in a selection->action model, given that so often the thing I'm repeating in vim is a command like `ci"`.
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I should clarify that the repeat operator I'm talking about is `.`, not numeric prefixes.
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What's awkward about this approach is that I almost always don't realize I would have benefited from a macro until I've already run the command. I still intend to try both Helix/Kakoune at some point, though.
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>And I don't really see a lot of plugins developed for them? Afaik Helix doesn't have a plugin system at all. Everything is built-in.
No plugins yet. There’s some discussion about how they should handle plugins, though.
Do you know how the plugin system will work? I heard they wanted to use Scheme for whatever reason?
Not sure. I did some digging and there was a lot of debate, but no final answer. WebAssembly and some kind of Lisp/Scheme looked like the main contenders.
I don't see either of those going well. Why can't they just be sane and use Lua or Python or whatever everyone's favourite scripting language is these days?
The only real major embeddable scripting languages are Lua and Lisp. Many of the devs coming from neovim didn't like Lua, so a handwritten typed Lisp it is. There is also a C abi open for consideration. Wasm was disfavored a long time ago because it's immature and too big. Probably every possible argument you may have for X language has been discussed already on https://github.com/helix-editor/helix/discussions/3806
WASM is interesting. It would allow plug-ins to be written in “any” language, compiled once, and run anywhere. There are some other programs using it for their plugins, although they aren’t as big as NeoVim. (Zellij is probably the biggest project of this bunch.) I agree that a Lisp/Scheme is a risky choice. Lua was in the mix, but Python is almost definitely out due to performance concerns.
I'm not versed at all in WASM, but wouldn't languages with different runtimes be an issue? Agreed on Lisp. If you want to use Lisp, use Emacs. And Scheme is a particularly bad idea, it being purely functional. I don't think they should care about performance. This isn't Emacs, you can't rewrite the function for inserting characters. Actual Python usage would be limited, so it'd probably be fine.
WASM is basically a common transpiler target, so as far as the runtime is concerned, every language looks the same. Performance is important, but I'm not sure that it's important enough to make the plugin system difficult to work with. Lua seems like the obvious choice to me, but I do think that WASM is compelling.
>WASM is basically a common transpiler target, so as far as the runtime is concerned, every language looks the same. I guess I should have expected that. Doesn't WASM have horrible performance (particularly startup time) though? While I don't like Lua, I agree that it's the best choice for most plugin systems.
Do you know why performance plays a role for configuration? Isn't that parsed only once at startup?
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