When I was in high school I found Sublime Text and learned “multiple cursors”. Since then, I’ve transitioned to vscode, mainly because I need LSP (without too much configuration work) for my work.
I keep hearing about how modal editing is faster and I would like to switch to a more performant editor. I’ve been looking at helix, as the 4th generation of the vi line of editors. Is anyone using it? Is it any good for the main code editor?
The problem that I have is that learning new editing keybindings would probably take me a month of time, before I get to the same amount of productivity (if I ever get here at all). So I’m looking for advice of people who have already done that before.
My code editing does involve a lot of “ctrl-arrow” to move around words, “ctrl-shift-arrow” to select words, “home/end” to move to beginning/end of the line, “ctrl-d” for “new cursor at next occurrence”, “shift-alt-down” for “new cursor in the line below”, “ctrl-shift-f” for “format file” and a few more to move around using LSP-provided “declaration”/“usages”.
I would have to unlearn all of that.
Also, I do use “ctrl-arrow” to edit this post. Have you changed keybindings in firefox too?
Don’t Speculate
Go to Twitch/YouTube. Watch a senior Vim/Jetbrains/Emacs/VS Code/Helix dev churn out code for a hackathon/advent-of-code, and see what you are (or are not!) missing out on.
If you have “how the hell did they just do that” moments, figure out what that feature is, and STEAL IT. If its too hard to steal, then maybe you are being limited by your editor. Base your “fear of missing out” on what you see rather than random people tossing their opinions around. Only you can answer “how much is that feature worth to me and my workflows?”
- If you’re going to try modal editors, sooner is exponentially better. Probably start with Vim bindings for VS Code.
- If you’re not going to go modal, then make absolutely sure you don’t bottom out. To be frank, Ctrl+D is the tip of the iceberg. Half the benefit of modal editors is, mastery is mandatory; they chase you around with a 10k volt taser until you’ve got 100 instinctual shortcuts. Hardly anyone mentions this but Go beyond/outside your editor: At the OS level, use spacebar as a modifier key, where holding spacebar converts your WASD into arrow keys. Then disable your normal arrow keys. Something like that will get you vim-like benefits, but in every app, and with a learning bump instead of a learning mountain. For VS Code, get cursor jumper extensions like Mario (block jumper), get cursor-alignment extensions, write boatloads of custom code snippets, get a macro record+replay extension, make a jump-to-next quote, jump to next bracket, install sequential number generator extension, a case change (camel case, snake case, etc) extension, sort lines, case-preserving rename. If you can avoid bottoming out, and keep learning, you’ll likely never feel that you are missing out on whatever modal editor people are swearing by.
I get this, but an IDE should be invisible and grow as you do and not require you to learn lots of janky things before it becomes a little bit useful for you.
Need the basics, great, here they are. Don’t understand some advanced feature? Well the IDE has it here, but it isn’t in your way, mess with it as and when you want. It’ll still be there.
I don’t think one IDE does everything for different languages and its ok to swap editors depending on your workflow, your project and your ever-changing skillset.
I get this, but
Why not say “I get this, and …” ?
I don’t think the idea of a learn-as-you-go editor goes against the idea of watching skilled devs with their favorite tool
I keep hearing about how modal editing is faster
Please, do yourself a favor and ignore that noise. It is more a question of like/dislike and training. Personal sidenote: I daily alternate between PhpStorm and Neovim. Can’t say doing things in either is faster/slower to any significant degree (PhpStorm is mostly there for the things I have not yet configered properly in Neovim, like looking through git history)
and I would like to switch to a more performant editor
This should be looked at and tested objectively: is it working with big files that is the problem? Or navigating the code base? Or something else? Maybe it is better to tweak vscode instead?
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I use Helix
TLDR: Yes I think helix is worth trying out. It has some missing features but it is an amazing piece of software.
Yes I use helix daily. It is very fun to use and you can do many things faster. It is particularly good when navigating a (large) codebase you know fairly well. You are able to jump around and find/edit relevant code very quickly.
Compared to vs code:
- it is much faster and more minimal
- It might be harder to get things up and running than in vs code, e.g. to get auto-completion working in helix you need to have the LSP for that language installed. It can be a bit confusing if you have never done it before but it is easy once you have done it a few times.
Compared to neovim I think it is:
- easier to learn
- slightly faster - especially with large files
- you will have a much smaller/simpler configuration. AFAIK Helix has more features working out of the box than neovim (file picker, lsp support ect) and needs less configuration to get things to a workable state.
The downside of helix compared to both neovim and vscode is that it does not have plugin support yet so you will need to use other tools in combination with it to get an equivalent experience. Here are some tools that are commonly used with helix:
- yazi - terminal file manager
- gitui or lazygit - terminal git user interface
- zellij - terminal pane manager
Helix really shines when:
- performance matters - I have edited files with millions of lines and had no trouble on codebases where my colleagues IDE’s become very slow.
- You want to use multiple cursors at times
- You want a simple or no configuration
- It is taking too long to learn the vim keybindings - vim keybindings are more concise but less intuitive and harder to learn
I recommend you use the tutor (
hx --tutor) for a few minutes each day to learn the keybidings.Thanks for the overview. I’ll work with tutor and see how frustrated I get :D
Regarding language servers:
Recently, I got into this philosophy of “every project needs a declarative environment”. It means that there is a committed file that should contain all tooling need to work with the project. Compilers, formatters, test runners and also: language servers.
This fights with vscode extensions which try to be clever and download their language server / bundle it into the extension itself. “No, rust-analyzer, I don’t want your build because it does not work with xtensa target arch I’m using in this project”.
So actually, this ties nicely with helix not providing the language servers itself, but allowing you to bring your own.
I’ve recently taken to kakoune which was one of the inspirations for Helix.
It’s not as fancy (in terms of built-in features) out of the box, but it’s very performant, integrates with tmux well, and for the C++ and Python I’m writing I haven’t felt the need for much beyond token based word completion and grep.
The client server model it uses has really let me improve my tmux skills because I’m working inside of it more and using it for editor splits.
I don’t know if Helix does this, but I’ve also come to love the pipe operator (where you just pipe a selection into some external program and the selection gets replaced with the output, so you can use the e.g. the sort command to sort text). You can also pretty easily add in custom extensions via command line programs.
Ahhh nice, I have thought about trying out Kakoune as it supports plugins. Do you use many plugins/find them useful?
Helix does have a pipe command also.
I’ve mostly just tweaked the configuration and built my own comment formatter/reflow command based on the comment style at work.
It’s almost more about what it doesn’t have for me, because what I’ve run into a lot with trying newer editors is they try and manage the code too much and the code base at work has its own style guide that doesn’t match what the editor tries to do. So the editor might make me slightly more productive … until I find myself fighting with it every 3 lines because of auto formatting or some language server quirk.
I use Jetbrains’ products for all my coding needs.
Same. Jetbrains makes the best IDEs hands down IMO and I say this after 20 years of coding and using numerous IDEs. I also use vscode as a backup but as more of a glorified text editor.
I used to use Jetbrains when I was using C# (mostly stopped now), because it was better that VS and tooling elsewhere is mediocre, on purpose by ms. But beyond that I don’t see the point. I say that as someone who has it for free through a student license. They’re such heavy editors, only kinda cross language, extension ecosystem not as good as vscode.
Great default keybindings though, I’ve adopted a lot of them elsewhere too
Do you use “home” “end” “ctrl-arrow” or any other interesting keybindings?
ctrl shif s - settings alt j - select next occurrence double tap shift - search functions and files
I’ll add shift + f6 for refactor rename and ctrl + 6 for redefining your function i.e. add/remove parameters and/or return value.
Do you have a minute to talk about my lord and savior VIM? Wanna see my dot files?
NeoVim plus tmux.
Great multi dimensional way of operating. You have access to the terminal and your ide.
It’s beautiful
Not dev but I’m in IT/Cybersec mostly as it’s much easier to find jobs there and I use vim just about everywhere, usually with tmux and i3 with custom vim-like keybinds (super+j move focus right etc), I use vim even on my phone in termux, with gboard.
I don’t use LSPs cause CBA but I only use Python and C and maybe occasionally bash for homelab stuff and I don’t have large projects (😭).
If I’m doing any ML stuff from scratch (not refining or writing API for local llm model or integrating it with another API but just building classifiers etc) for fun I use Jupyter. Such a wildly different way of coding honestly ngl it’s wild, but great when you need to document what you’re doing.
At uni I used to use fucking Visual Studio with C# and Netbeans with Java, but I learned it pretty well. I don’t think they ever even taught us how to run code outside those 😂
At work I use gedit and gnome terminal for navigation cuz it’s company time unless I’m personally interested in what I’m doing.
vscode + whatever connection plugin you need + vim plugin
I just use Vim out of habit. I’ve been using it as my main text editor since I was like 13 or so, maybe more like 10 I don’t really remember. It works perfectly well for the vast majority of my use cases. I use Jetbrains IDEs if I feel I need the power of a full IDE. Jetbrains has an IdeaVim plugin if you want it to be a modal editor, or if your fingers are accustomed to Vim keybindings.
I used to use VSCodium, but in my quest to touch the mouse as little as possible I switched to Neovim.
I hate to be that guy but (neo)vim has served me well for too long. I don’t even use any crazy maps or plugins; it’s just comfy.
I keep hearing about how modal editing is faster and I would like to switch to a more performant editor.
Honestly I’ve yet to hear a good argument for this. It feels like such a major investment to switch to vi-like editors, I need a pretty good argument before considering it
Also a good argument for “why does it matter”? Speed of editing is rarely a bottleneck when editing code. If it is, you might want to consider why your code is so verbose and repetitive to make it so
I used vi for a few years so have the muscle memory and the sole advantage in my perception was that everything is simple typing with hands remaining in the home keys position (except Escape, ironically).
So it’s more relaxed if you find using modifiers onerous, but I don’t find Ctrl or Alt significantly worse than Shift, and I don’t find it any worthwhile advantage.
I read that, originally, Caps Lock was supposed to be the mode-changing key. For some historical reason that changed to Escape.
It’s more that the position of the escape key changed. This was they layout of the keyboard vi was written on. Note the arrow keys too.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vi_(text_editor)#/media/File:KB_Terminal_ADM3A.svg
Modal editing for just raw text input would actually be slower, because you also enter and leave Insert Mode. I find it’s very fast and powerful for navigating around the text, which you probably do a lot more than actually editing it. And when it does come to editing, there are a lot of higher-level tools (at least in Vim) for accomplishing things more quickly, like the ‘s’ command and ‘q’ macros.
I think getting into a mental “flow” state is really valuable, and muscle memory is important for being able to stay there. If your muscle memory is to navigate around using the mouse, that’s great, but Vim feels faster to me.
In my personal experience, it’s a little faster but not a huge speed difference. However, it’s much more pleasant and ergonomic. I enjoy the act of modal editing much more than modeless.
Input speed is not “just” input speed.
Note: I’m not about to argue for or against modal editors, I just want to answer: why is input speed really really really important, when (we agree) its not a big percent of total time.
5min at 80mph over a bumpy dirt path is very very different than 5min of flat smooth straight driving. And not just because of effort.
A senior and junior dev could spend the same amount of time to rename a var across 15 files, move a function to a new file, comment out two blocks, comment one back in, etc. But. When I try to have a conversation while they do that, or when I change my mind and tell the junior to undo all that, its a massive emotional drain on the junior.
But effort isn’t the whole picture either: speed is a big deal because pausing a conversation/mental thought for 5 seconds while you wait to finish some typing, is incredibly disruptive/jarring to the thought-process itself. That’s how edge cases get forgotten, and business logic gets missed.
Slower input is not merely input time loss, it also creates time loss in the debugging/conceptualizing stages, and increases overall energy consumption.
If the input is already fast enough that there’s no “pauses in the conversation” then I’d agree, there’s not much benefit in increasing input speed further. BUT there’s almost always some task, like converting all local vars (but not imported methods) in a project to camel case, that are big enough to choke the conversation, even for a senior dev. So there’s not necessarily a “good enough” point because it’s more like decreasing how often the conversation gets interrupted.
I’ve tried to learn Vim in the past but IMO it is not worth it at all. In a world without multiple cursors… sure, maybe. With multiple cursors? No way. I can can edit just as fast as I’ve seen any Vim user do it, and without having to remember a gazillion mnemonics and deal with the silly modal thing.
Multiple cursor editing even has some significant advantages over Vim style, e.g. it’s interactive, so you can do your edit gradually and go back if you make a mistake. Rather than having to write a complex command and only finding out it if works at the end. (If you’ve used regex find & replace you’ll understand that problem.)
I’ll probably get downvoted for this since Vim is kind of a cult, and Vim users get a sense of superiority from it. Kind of like audiophiles - they don’t appreciate it if you tell them their £10k valve amp doesn’t actually sound any better than your £1k digital amp.
For editing on remote computers I use VSCode remote or Micro for quick tasks.
I’m still learning to code, but I tried out a bunch and I’ve liked using Vim, VScodium and Pycharm.
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