- cross-posted to:
- text_editors@programming.dev
- cross-posted to:
- text_editors@programming.dev
Helix does not aim to be a better vim / neovim. Thus, for example, there are officially no vim bindings and Helix follows the selection → action model. Helix is also a relatively new project.
In my opinion, users who already use vim are not the primary target audience of Helix. I see the target group more among users who want to switch from a “normal” editor to a modal editor. The selection → action model and the easier shortcuts probably make the switch easier for many. I personally don’t like vim at all because of the handling (purely subjective view). Helix will definitely not be my default editor but I get along much better with it than with vim or neovim.
When I first tried Helix, my main concern (that prevented me from getting too far into it) was not going from Vim to Helix, but the other way around. Vim (or sometimes vi) is a standard editor on almost any Linux machine, so if I am ever working on a server if a VM, I would need to know/use Vim keybinds. That made Vim a more useful tool for me to learn at the time, as I could use the skills both on my machine and anywhere else.
I don’t feel like this is true anymore. Many distros do not ship vi(m) anymore but only nano.
Seems like most rpm based distro still ship vi/vim and don’t default to nano.
Good to know. In Debian and Gentoo nano is the only editor by default.
I understand the argument, but in my opinion it is used far too often and is not always true.
Not everyone works with servers on which they have no influence on the installed software.
And in the few cases where I had to work with servers on which I had no influence on the installed software and on which actually only vim was installed, I could always use sshfs or rclone mount without any problems so that the editor I used didn’t matter.
In my (limited) experience, I most needed a CLI/TUI editor when working over ssh on a server or in a VM where I didn’t want to bother installing a new editor or setting up a remote editing connection, or inside of something like a docker container, where the image is somewhat immutable.
If I needed to spend enough time editing that it made sense to set up an editor, then I could just spend the time getting VSCode or Neovim set up just as easily as Helix.
I don’t really mean this as a criticism of Helix, just explaining why I did not initially want to invest time into learning it. Now that it has matured more and I have learned Vim enough to be comfortable, I would be interested in taking another look.
I disagree with that. Yes users new to modal is likely a target - but as a long time and heavy vim user I do find helix to be much nicer to use and have switch to it full time. So I think that vim users that are sick of all the configuration and plugins needed to get it into a good state are also a strong target for helix.