A very brief overview of the helix modal text editor

The helix text editor is text editing's final form, until there's a new final form and I switch to that.

### Links

#coding #programming #rust #softwareengineer #softwareengineer #softwareengineering #texteditor #textediting

[Tantandev]

I've used helix for months in all my projects. Absolutely love it. The built in features is phenomenal, so I've had no need for any plugins

[icephonex]

helix looks very interesting but it's a very young project so I want to see if it will increase in popularity (because more popularity for foss software means more potential contributors and upgrades), please continue making updates about your workflow with helix with later releases, it's super interesting to see it grow

[Adityarm.]

Agreed with the points you shared. I've started using helix & love it. Some behavior felt buggy when I started, but got used to it & now it makes sense to me :D
There is one (small) point in favor of vim's universality still - online editors such as google-colab have vim keybindings that can't be replaced with helix. I generally try to stick to only minimal-common-subset for it. Mentally switching back & forth is also not too "inefficient" when you're anyway spending 80% time thinking about the solution & 20% time actually writing it.

[vitormelo]

Helix is amazing, is very fast, default config is very nice.

[monki]

I like Helix Editor; I might switch over, but Vim keybindings *can* be used in several non-vim apps. Obsidian has a vim mode. Gnome Builder has one. Logseq has plug-ins to enable some Vim keybinding functionality. There's the Vi option in bash, etc. And the benefit of this is getting to skip learning different commands for these apps. I find out how to activate a vim mode and get to editing. Emacs users benefit from knowing their common commands for the same reason--turning on modes. Helix would benefit from following suit.

[franksenkel]

I just found Helix and love it!...I was going down the rabbit hole of neovim configuration, and decided it was WAAAAY to complicated and a total mess....lua sucks I don't know why people insist on using it...

[thatguynar]

Is there like some resource to ease myself into helix? Haven't used neovim that much so I'm not that good when it comes to the keybinds etc.

[Metruzanca]

Been a huge fan of helix since I first heard about it. Looking forward to plugin support.

[unpin]

Unfortunately treesitter hurts performance really bad on very large files

[nevergetbored.]

I totally agree with what your saying. The learning curve for vim/neovim is painful. While I do know how to get around with vim/neo, I found helix to be soooo much more approachable. More specifically, setting up the plugins for vim/neovim just to do the things that helix already does out of the box is a huge win imo. ie variable, functions, method, etc reference definitions is probably one of my favorite features that would otherwise need to be plugged in with vim/neovim. Is it perfect? No. Is it my daily driver? Yes.

[amir_dan_arch]

I as a newbie work with Helix too.
And my first and last reason for my choice is its simplicity and convenience.

[charlescowart]

Agreed. Another point w/nvim plug-ins that I’ve noticed is that they can be very Linux-centric; not the greatest for those of us on the bsds.

[shinobi]

They didn’t lie when they said that vi is a cult. They’re crazy people 😂. Might try helix

[ChrisCox-wvoo]

"if you own the server" is a big assumption.

I do not, in fact, own any of my work's servers.

And there's a while world of Linux devices outside of servers. Not everything can run helix. They all got vi/vim.

VI's presence everywhere isn't a great argument for using it as your primary editor, but neither is 'install helix everywhere'.

[comityway]

Your comments are good your thoughts are good. But you are only talking. This would be great if you provided a visual example of everything you went over.

[Mytest]

The editor has a minus for foreigners. It only works in English. Even file names in other languages are ignored and files are not seen.

[makidoko]

Vim is like the mother of your children, whom you've lived happily for years.
Helix is like the young temptress, crusty and funny, and constantly eye blinking to you.
Switching is cheating, is treason. But since Bram is dead, who cares about your sins now ?

[fms]

No other modal editing key binding should exist. Neovim rules. Nuff said.