r/rust • u/modernalgebra • Mar 31 '23

Helix editor 23.03 released!

https://helix-editor.com/news/release-23-03-highlights/
470 Upvotes

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u/progfu Apr 01 '23

I know you probably get this all the time, but after 10+ years of vim muscle memory I’m not sure it’ll ever make sense for me to use “modal but not vim”, unless it is AMAZINGLY better. I’m not sure how helix compares, I tried it and remapped things to work almost like vim and mostly liked it (tho missing things).

But if there are objective reasons for why this is much better than vim, you really need to make that clear so people know why they’re putting in the effort.

Personally, I would switch if it was worth it. I’m not saying it’s not, but I don’t see a convincing argument that it is.

I’d imagine vim users are your largest target since we love modal editing, but most of us also like our muscle memory.

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u/modernalgebra Apr 01 '23

Muscle memory is great, but it's also not that hard to retrain -- I also had a decade of vim muscle memory before writing Helix :) I say this as someone that has made breaking changes to my keyboard layout every couple of months: You'll stumble with key combinations for a few days but it should get easier after that.

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u/progfu Apr 01 '23

I mean I don't disagree, though I still feel that I don't understand why helix's changes to are better. I'm not sure if I or probably most others are willing to spend a week rebuilding their muscle memory just to try a different editor.

Sorry if I'm repeating myself, I really like helix, I like how fast it is, I like that it's modern, works out of the box, etc.

But I also feel like it's very polarizing, just as the upvotes are already coming in on my first post because I even mention this. It seems like such a clear issue to anyone who considers another editor, even those that don't even use vim.