I really wanted to like Helix, it's a great software, works out of the box. I dedicated energy to unlearn my vim habits and learn the helix way. I'm now able to use it fairly effectively, but eventually I just came to the conclusion the bindings are done the way they are due to simpler implementation, not simpler user interface. I'm back to neovim for small updates and zed in vim mode for larger code editing.
>eventually I just came to the conclusion the bindings are done the way they are due to simpler implementation, not simpler user interface
This was my general feel from using it for a bit too. I don't think that necessarily makes it a worse result (there's a form of user-facing consistency in 'this implements like that', it's just a bit meta), but it's one of the things that constantly pushed me away a bit. Some semi-common actions just didn't feel ergonomic, even after a couple weeks. (not implying that vim is a bastion of perfection, of course)
That said, I HIGHLY recommend people give Helix and/or Kakoune it a try. The different mental model is immediately compelling in some ways, and on balance I think it's a better approach. It's just that you have to weigh the details that might not work for you against all the other IDEs out there that have a heck of a lot more stuff already built for them... and it may mean you don't keep using them. Or you'll be thrilled with the end result.
Have you tried Ki Editor[0]? It seems to be more into direction that you are looking for. It is not as mature as the rest of the editors but the editing model is definitely an improvement from ux perspective
[0]: https://ki-editor.org/
Vis editor [0] also has multicursor and powerful sam's structural regular expression
[0]: https://github.com/martanne/vis
Hadn't heard of this. So I looked at the docs for Ki.
I see the "Why Ki?", and then it has this:
> Being first-class means that it is not an extra or even sidekick; it is the protagonist.
Eh.
I find it quite off putting.
I guess my expectation is that someone enthusiastic enough to write a text editor with a value proposition of "it's got good tree-sitter-based navigation" would want to discuss why they thing syntactic selection is neat.
Seeing cliche LLMisms doesn't signal the same level of care to me.
Having been in the community for some time, it is just how the authors are, very enthusiastic about the wording. They like to come up with some wild terms explaining different behaviors and reasoning behind those behaviors, like "positional coherence" or "behavioral asymmetry", and the term "kimmunity" to reference to ki editor community. On a surface level, sure, it looks LLM generated, but I would be very surprised if they used LLM to generate that sentence. I choose to look at the actual meaning of the content and what they are trying to do differently
To me, what you describe is a red flag.
For example, that doesn't sound like they will take feedback from the community serious.
To some extend that is true for any opinionated piece of software. But that is a beauty of opensource don't use it if it doesn't match your idea of how that software should look like
It's not generated by LLM, it was actually my idea, but grammar-corrected by LLM, but you are not wrong either, the docs are really subpar in a lot of ways, and not clearly explaining why is one of them, and of course, the potentially cringey sentences too, someone complained the docs read like a Vogue magazine before lol
There is also evil-helix [0] a helix fork with vim bindings. Maybe that‘s something you would enjoy :)
[0] https://github.com/usagi-flow/evil-helix
at that point… use vim? genuinely asking. what does this get you?
Not having to deal with neovim plugins is a HUGE win. Using neovim with plugins feels like using a rolling Linux distro, you never know what breaks next. That's what I use zed, personally. It's the best modern vi-like editor, in my opinion.
> Using neovim with plugins feels like using a rolling Linux distro, you never know what breaks next.
You can just… not update them.
Yeah I always see this "issue" with Neovim and its almost entirely user-cultural, installing big blobs of plugins, updating to edge every day and some kind of jones's pressure.
These days you can probably install mini.vim to get basically every paper cut fixed (eg extra "surround objects", aligning text, plugin manager etc), a theme, a few other assortments to taste and park your plugins at known commits or include them in your dotfiles and its ... fine. I haven't updated my plugins in probably 6 months and when I do I update them selectively only if there is actually a reason to do it or the changes are very minor.
They don't have LTS releases, there is always a bug somewhere and the bug fix includes a number of features, if not new dependencies.
I just use neovim ;) Just commented to inform. But I can see the benefit of something like evil-helix, very limited setup being needed and getting features like LSP out of the box …
I'm a very long time user of vi/vim, and I've gotten tired of maintaining vim configs. I've gotta have my LSPs and treesitters. I decided I wanted to move away from self maintenance and use something opinionated.
But, I found helix a little too opinionated. In particular, when you exit and go back into the file it won't take you back to where you were. I decided I'd start using helix on my "work journal" file which is over 20K lines and I edit somewhere towards but not at the end (done is above the cursor, to do and notes are below). Also, I NEED hard line wrapping for that.
Helix doesn't seem interested in incorporating either of those, which were "must haves" for me.
So I set the LLMs on it and they were able to make those changes, which was pretty cool. But I ended up deciding that I really didn't want to maintain my own helix fork for this, not really a plus over maintaining my vim config.
The different bindings vs Vim was actually what stopped me using it. I really really wanted to love it and love a lot of the motivation and principles behind it, but unlearning decades of muscle memory is an absolute nightmare.
what do you mean it does not have a simpler user interface? I found the combo of hx for quick edits/terminal work and Zed with hx bindings for everything else great.