4 ms·

With the risk of being somewhat off-topic, in this thread I'll be the one bringing up Helix first. As a vim user for 20 years, I tried it out last time it was b

With the risk of being somewhat off-topic, in this thread I'll be the one bringing up Helix first. As a vim user for 20 years, I tried it out last time it was brought up on HN two months ago. I have been using it ever since and I probably won't go back. Despite my 20 years of vimming I had never really successfully customized it deeply, going with very few plugins and changes. Tried neovim a few times and it is amazing when it works, but the various distros, plugin updates and occasioanal errors made me anxious. If you are a power vim/nvim user who likes tweaking their config and playing with plugins that's great and nvim truly delivers on the Personal Development Environment idea as it is sometimes called. For me, having more things covered almost out of the box (and by installing a few non-Helix packages like LSP servers) in Helix than I ever properly had without issues in vim setups (LSP, treesitter, fuzzy file open, built in keymap help, etc.) is liberating. The only clear downside for me is some of the shortcuts are different (xd instead of dd) but even those can be configured to be more like vim if you wish to. For others no built-in-debugger or git integration may be showstoppers, since those will only be done via plugins when the plugin infrastructure is done. When I heard about Helix a few years ago I was dismissive since it seemed like a pointless rewrite of and editor in Rust for performance or for a more consistent approach to keymappings, both of which seemed good goals but not good enough to switch your editor. The fact that it comes with so many features built in and thus stops the possibility of fragmentation across a lot of dimensions is very reassuring though. I want opinionated tools because I am not that special and neither are my programming tasks that different from other people's. Vim still has a special place in my heart and use it on remote servers. So, sorry if off-topic, but for those who are in similar position - want bells and whistles not just a plain editor, but gets tired by finding and maintenance of many plugins - it may be worth checking out.

oblio 3y ago
Neovim is a bit of a disappointment on a certain front. The devs stated decision is not to deliver an actual editor (up to a point), their focus is on creating an editing component and ecosystem. Which is fair on their side, but it shows in the quality of end-user tooling. For example nvim-qt is quite barebones compared to Gvim (which could be argued to have had too many features... maybe). > Tried neovim a few times and it is amazing when it works, but the various distros, plugin updates and occasioanal errors made me anxious. I have the exact problem as you. I don't even need a ton of features besides the core Vim/Neovim ones, I'd just want stuff I've come to expect from similar editors/IDEs in the past decade, and Neovim doesn't want to bless any of them: - file manager - universal search (commands and files; Ctrl-Shift-P, Ctrl-P) I think it's best to accept that the target audience for Vim/Neovim is a certain kind of person and despite a relative match on many fronts, we're probably not enough of a match for long term use. Oh well.
- csdvrx 3y ago
  > I have the exact problem as you. I don't even need a ton of features besides the core Vim/Neovim ones, I'd just want stuff I've come to expect from similar editors/IDEs in the past decade, and Neovim doesn't want to bless any of them: > - file manager > - universal search (commands and files; Ctrl-Shift-P, Ctrl-P) Can you describe what you'd like to see? How it would work, what it would do? I'd like to add more interaction between fzy and vim, and better integrate bash and vim. It looks like a good usecase!
  - oblio 3y ago
    Well, open up any of Sublime Text, VS Code and quite a few other editors. You press a key combo (Ctrl-P is the standard combo these days, it seems). A small input window pops up at the top and the search results drop down, this is way more ergonomic for reading, unfortunately, than the old timey Emacs/Vim command mode input at the bottom and pop up results. Ctrl-Shift-P would be for searching for commands. So you'd go "find" and the drop down would contain the relevant "find" commands which you could then select and parameterize: https://youtu.be/B-s71n0dHUk?feature=shared&t=380 https://youtu.be/B-s71n0dHUk?feature=shared&t=380 For search, you go Ctrl-P and the same input window pops up, just that it does a fuzzy search of your project folder by default. For the file manager, it's that thing on the left in Sublime Text, VS Code. It's a mini file manager that shows the project/folder you've opened. It's very convenient when not editing a lone file, which is probably 99% of the time for DevOps and dev work.
- imjonse 3y ago
  Project governance types affect the end result. While smaller projects like Helix have a few (or maybe one?) decision makers, vi/vim/nvim is such a large and decades old community with so much diversity that the proliferation of plugins - which in itself would not be bad if there wasn't so much low quality and abandonware without clear signs that that is the case - cannot be easily transformed into a solution most will agree on. Most 'the ultimate vim/nvim plugin pack' will just have its own small community, rise and fall.
  - 3y ago

oblio 3y ago

Neovim is a bit of a disappointment on a certain front. The devs stated decision is not to deliver an actual editor (up to a point), their focus is on creating an editing component and ecosystem. Which is fair on their side, but it shows in the quality of end-user tooling. For example nvim-qt is quite barebones compared to Gvim (which could be argued to have had too many features... maybe). > Tried neovim a few times and it is amazing when it works, but the various distros, plugin updates and occasioanal errors made me anxious. I have the exact problem as you. I don't even need a ton of features besides the core Vim/Neovim ones, I'd just want stuff I've come to expect from similar editors/IDEs in the past decade, and Neovim doesn't want to bless any of them: - file manager - universal search (commands and files; Ctrl-Shift-P, Ctrl-P) I think it's best to accept that the target audience for Vim/Neovim is a certain kind of person and despite a relative match on many fronts, we're probably not enough of a match for long term use. Oh well.

csdvrx 3y ago
> I have the exact problem as you. I don't even need a ton of features besides the core Vim/Neovim ones, I'd just want stuff I've come to expect from similar editors/IDEs in the past decade, and Neovim doesn't want to bless any of them: > - file manager > - universal search (commands and files; Ctrl-Shift-P, Ctrl-P) Can you describe what you'd like to see? How it would work, what it would do? I'd like to add more interaction between fzy and vim, and better integrate bash and vim. It looks like a good usecase!
- oblio 3y ago
  Well, open up any of Sublime Text, VS Code and quite a few other editors. You press a key combo (Ctrl-P is the standard combo these days, it seems). A small input window pops up at the top and the search results drop down, this is way more ergonomic for reading, unfortunately, than the old timey Emacs/Vim command mode input at the bottom and pop up results. Ctrl-Shift-P would be for searching for commands. So you'd go "find" and the drop down would contain the relevant "find" commands which you could then select and parameterize: https://youtu.be/B-s71n0dHUk?feature=shared&t=380 https://youtu.be/B-s71n0dHUk?feature=shared&t=380 For search, you go Ctrl-P and the same input window pops up, just that it does a fuzzy search of your project folder by default. For the file manager, it's that thing on the left in Sublime Text, VS Code. It's a mini file manager that shows the project/folder you've opened. It's very convenient when not editing a lone file, which is probably 99% of the time for DevOps and dev work.
imjonse 3y ago
Project governance types affect the end result. While smaller projects like Helix have a few (or maybe one?) decision makers, vi/vim/nvim is such a large and decades old community with so much diversity that the proliferation of plugins - which in itself would not be bad if there wasn't so much low quality and abandonware without clear signs that that is the case - cannot be easily transformed into a solution most will agree on. Most 'the ultimate vim/nvim plugin pack' will just have its own small community, rise and fall.
- 3y ago