Helix Code Editor - Vi For Mere Mortals!

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[@lewisse_8966]

0:16 "1873" lol

[@adlerkampf]

yeah Karl Marx used to code with neo vim too back in the days

[@Walter_White-ey6si]

developed by Nikola Tesla xD

[@JustinThorLPs]

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vi_(text_editor)

[@koenlefever]

It runs on Charles Babbage's Analytical Engine.

[@c__beck]

So I did hear what I thought I heard! lol

[@pugo7925]

Tried it and never look back, it came just with the right amount of things I need build in.

[@Andre-LA]

About scripting, the last time I checked: it's planned, but other things will be done first, and they will use Scheme lisp.

[@RenderingUser]

id like to know how that scales up to lua for configuration

[@wacesferpit]

@@RenderingUser a lot more parentheses

[@twenty-fifth420]

Oh they are SCHEMING HUH!?!

[@jhonyortiz5]

Yeah, I love helix and I wished they used Lua. Lua has just become the defacto configuration language for so many tools. It's easier and it's also fast with a jit.

[@Andre-LA]

@@jhonyortiz5 I also love Lua, but I think JIT is unnecessary, I think the decision about using scheme was to maintain the software being pure Rust (lua is c and luajit is c+assembly ), and also bc it's a very simple lang (thus easy to maintain or to change implementation).

[@Andre-LA]

I do use Helix everyday, it's pretty good

[@nERVEcenter117]

Back when Kakoune was first breaking out, I learned this control grammar and absolutely LOVED the selection-action order, as well as the multiselect. I've tried Helix, but I've become lazy and Sublime meets most of my needs. I'm in a field and using a language where actual typing is dwarfed by thinking and jotting out solutions with a pen and paper.

[@RenderingUser]

how does it compare to vim tho? you can use selection-action order if you just press v first

[@Hoowwwww]

same here, i use kak for editing files when i'm on the terminal but most of my time is spent on sublime, i like it because plugins are written in python, it's quite nice and the editor feels good to type on

[@lmelior]

1873 🤣 This looks great! The only trouble with these "better, modernized versions of old tools" is that they aren't going to be anywhere by default. Like I spent some time many years ago playing with zsh and it was awesome, but then I went back to work and only had bash or tcsh. This stuff is great if you're a solo developer, freelancer, or otherwise have total control over the environments you work in, but the rest of us just have to look wistfully at the features we might have in 20 years.

[@kyryllvlasiuk]

How do you exit the Helix? You turn counterclockwise

[@keilmillerjr9701]

Escape or Ctrl+c would make sense... But no. You better read the documentation first.

[@etherealregions]

This might be just what I've been looking for, to use with Linux. I'll definitely try it out.

[@NicolasEmbleton]

Very very cool. Still a huge fan of Zed, but Neovim is close behind. Gonna try this one out.

[@mixed_nuts]

Ive been using Helix for a long time now, and the main issue I have with Zed is that you can still tell the difference in latency. There's just something that feels so good about how fast Helix is that kills my drive to use other editors even if they have more features :/

[@kptnix]

Which do you like more?

[@jabuci]

I used vim, then neovim, then tried helix, and finally settled down with micro.

[@andersen3666]

Quick tip for : menu, you can use Tab to navigate through the suggestions, making some tasks as easy as :

[@msec7188]

i think ill give this a try i have been using micro for quite a while now

[@nathanfranck5822]

I've been using Helix for 3 months, it's super nice to have it on my crappy little laptop, my phone (through termux), so it's GREAT in memory/CPU constrained environments... but when I have a full-powered desktop, I can't help being more productive in VSCode :/

[@whatsanimesh]

Yo I use it on my phone too. Amazing experience.

[@tuananhdo1870]

why you more productive in VSCode, what VS code offer that helix don't have?

[@whatsanimesh]

@@tuananhdo1870 it's just about habits, maybe they have invested more time in VSCode

[@ShawnThuris]

Helix is my default editor, coming from vim and briefly neovim. I find the workflow and commands more logical. It's not much trouble to set up on Ubuntu 20 or later, but kind of a pain on Debian.

[@jawuku3885]

On Linux Mint Debian Edition, I had to first install snap, then install Helix.

[@skubed007]

Am back m first !! I luv ur vids

[@UliTroyo]

I’ve been using Helix for years! HIGHLY recommend if the idea of a lightweight Vim appeals to you.

[@gorudonu]

I like helix, but vim shortcuts are engraved in my brain now and most editors have vim bindings, not helix bindings

[@kappilino]

Supports the Editor inline hints ? I don’t want to miss this feature anymore, especialy for languages with type inference, so i can see the return type of an function call in the editor.

[@MegaSeppHuber]

Yes it does.

[@nowherebrain]

coding like this, like modeling in blender, can be blazingly fast.....it has a small learning curve but once you get going you notice immediately how fast it can be...especially when you try to go back to another ide.

[@cbbcbb6803]

I like editors that default to input mode at startup. After all, they are called "editor", not viewer. I think that "editors" that are based on vi usually require you to specify edit mode. Maybe they were originally batch utilities on mainframes that were not able to do interactive editing. I do not know. But on modern we almost always use editors to do interactive editing.

[@daliareds]

Vi was created before mice were readily available, hence why it doesn't make use of it. It's super weird at first, but when you get used to it, it can be a lot faster

[@julians.2597]

I like editors that default to normal mode at startup. After all, they are called "editor", not writer.

[@mcine]

I think that best thing about this editor is the actoin order. first select then action (fex. select word, delete), .. much more familiar to me than neovim's (change around word).

[@element1111]

I like the g key mappings for navigation: gl /gh to go to the end / start of the line, ge and gg to go to the end / start of the file. Im sure neovim could rebind them but out of the box it was $ and ^ and whatnot to do the same stuff.

[@tyfoo]

I tried this briefly the other day, but as someone who uses vim keybindings everywhere, I feel like I'm just tripping over my own feet in Helix. The commands are almost inverted from vim. It seems like a great piece of software, but I don't think I can relearn another control scheme like this.

[@RedstonekPL]

i've tried helix i would daily drive it instead of neovim but no ctags support is a dealbreaker for me (i dont use lsps)

[@varshard0]

How's it compared to lazyvim? Neovim that's bundled with dozens of plugins. Looks like they share some features.

[@jhonyortiz5]

I tried lazyvim for a bit. If you haven't used Neovim/vim before, helix is a little easier to learn and set-up. Lazyvim comes with a lot of plugins but I found I wanted to configure it and that's where it got pretty complicated. I didn't know Lua at all and that made it even more difficult. Helix it's just toml files. And most of what you need is already configured with sensible defaults. But if you are an advanced Neovim user, then you might miss scripting. Helix doesn't have scripting yet but it's in the works.

[@RenderingUser]

Wait you legit use warp terminal? is it any good?

[@thedeemon]

Yes! It's on another level. Most other terminals basically provide a matrix of text. Warp is more GUI-like, more Notebook/Jupyter-like, with some pop-ups and other uses of graphical abilities, not just plain text. Built-in AI helper is actually quite helpful too.

[@RenderingUser]

@@thedeemon tbh kitty terminal and wezterm is enough for my graphical needs anything that adds more than half a second to a terminal startup time makes a terminal unusable for me

[@thedeemon]

@@RenderingUser WezTerm indeed starts faster. But what I meant is not just being able to show a picture, it's a different mode of operation, not usual for terminals. Like, when you start entering a command Warp will show a popup with similar commands from history, and when choosing among those it will also show details about last time a command from history was executed - how long ago it happened, what was the result, how long it worked etc. In another popup window. So it's a richer UI, not like yet another text window. Or, when a long running command is executing with lots of output (like compiling something) Warp will show which command is running and where, and after it ends, the command will be still visible above, you don't have to scroll up to see.

[@RenderingUser]

@@thedeemon similar commands from history? thats a feature thats in most shells i use it all the time you can even fuzzy find previously used commands in most shells so i dont see the apeal of somthing like warp terminal the same way i dont have much use for stuff like vscode

[@thedeemon]

@@RenderingUser Yeah, shells also do it, but not in the same graphical way

[@negvorsa]

So can you setup avr-gcc or risc-v compiler and edit embedded projects ? I don't think so ...

[@Wilker_uwu]

it's much better than the neovim distros if you're interested in the carrier keys that you have issues loading for ages. it is annoying to configure hotkeys that you're using in multiple modes though.

[@jhonyortiz5]

No scripting yet, bur it is planne. Having said that, you can pipe to your own scripts and the output can replace the selected text that was used as input. Not always the answer but pretty useful in a pinch.

[@SMOKE3104]

I'm a Nvim user and I endorse using this. I don't because vim is how I think. If you have not used vim extensively, use helix.

[@markcoren2842]

Looks like I'll test drive it after all... thanks for an insightful video! One side note: "vee-eye" as opposed to "vie"

[@markcoren2842]

Four months later, and it was totally worth the shift. Thanks for pointing us in a good direction :)

[@Aeroxima]

What's a good editor for Unity in Linux?

[@charliegnu]

I tried Helix and couldn't get used to it. My vim muscle memory made it unusable for me.

[@mixchief]

Don't know how many times I've taken up Vi/Vim and just given up on it :D

[@nickvolf]

I've tried this with godot, but I can't get the lsp and autocomplete to work. Does anyone have any more information?

[@nickvolf]

[language-server.godot] command = "nc" args = [ "127.0.0.1", "6005"] [[language]] name = "gdscript" language-servers = [ "godot" ] found it myself. You can add this to the languages.toml file.

[@xpynim]

is it using vi navigation (hjkl) ?

[@chocoblan4288]

yes

[@MrVirusDi]

An interesting editor!

[@ArchimedesTrajano]

I tried, reverted back to `vi` it doesn't handle `dd` to delete lines and pasting is wonky.

[@elielhdz2503]

how do you open a file from within helix

[@jawuku3885]

you can either in command mode type :o or :open and enter the file name,or press Space and f to bring up a telescope-like interface for the current directory.

[@vadelledhem2945]

Very useful channel

[@callyral]

Oh dang it I just set up Nixvim and now I see this?

[@cariyaputta]

Install and config Helix is not hard, but you have to install all language servers, debugger, and linters yourself.

[@titan_codes]

Tried it, neovim is far better. Though it's decent out of the box. But without plugins hard no for me

[@cyberdrizzt]

1873, man this thing is old.. I wonder how the first version was coded 🤣

[@Ste12321]

In a game creating standpoint, how does this speed up coding? To me it looks clunky to not use the mouse, and slower to use? If i want to select a piece of code I just highlight it to exactly where i want it, this seems way slower? Then switching back to your game editor to do some placing of objects or whatever, then back the he code editor and switching back and forth between hand on mouse and off mouse.

[@Capewearer]

Modal "keyboard only" editors are another productivity cargo-cult. In real IT job most time-consuming task is thinking and applying algorythms, not typing letters, which you can train pretty easily. Use such editors for other reasons (you have weak PC, wide programming languages support in editor, customization etc).

[@DrRabbit0]

Well, neovim supports mouse selection (probably through terminal, since I need to use it's shortcut for copy and not nvim's), so it shouldn't be much slower. Just writing down is basically as fast, as in a normal editor. Where vim motions shine, is editing and navigating already existing code. At least I am much more swift at jumping around and making small changes with vim motions, than with mouse/arrows. Aaaand I find vim's shortcuts much more manageable than this crazy pile of "ctrl+alt+shift+whatever and chords on top" normal editors have (like srsly, how can anyone remember this stuff?...) Like other one said, thinking takes up more time than writing (most of the time), but it sure is nice to change something really quick and precise and get back to important things.

[@blu3_enjoy]

I like it

[@NicolasEmbleton]

1873??? Such oldness. 😅

[@nowherebrain]

1873... :) it was coded by general custard....

[@snatvb]

what about extenstions? and llm like copilot

[@senapk]

Much more consistent than nvim. But the lacking of copilot support is a huge cons. I really need it for speedup my work.

[@hunter7777]

"VIM was first designed in 1873." Are you kidding me? Computers weren't even around then.

[@XMaster340]

Seriously, that would explain so much!

[@josephlh1690]

1873?! where the hell did you get that number?! You should really correct such a preposterous claim. 1973 sounds more in line with reality than 1873

[@bigali69190]

Vim is older than linux 😅

[@ulrich-tonmoy]

Not really vi is older than Linux Vim is 2 months younger than linux

[@naranyala_dev]

zellij + helix, all rust

[@XMaster340]

alias vim=nano alias vi=nano alias emacs=nano There, fixed your entire system for you. You're welcome.

[@RenderingUser]

bruh thats like replacing a bike with a toy car

[@RedstonekPL]

alias nano=emacs fixed the OS, now just to find a good text editor

[@paultapping9510]

I use vi=lvim

[@XMaster340]

@@RedstonekPL Thank you. Almost forgot that one. It's fixed now ✌️

[@XMaster340]

@@RenderingUser Vim is not a bike, because everyone can figure out how to exit a bike.

[@TheLongestConfidence]

Don't be a baby, just learn emacs with evil mode.

[@charlieking7600]

You've turned one of the best invention into the abomination.

[@windowsrefund]

"Vi uses h, j, k, l to move around......... I've never gotten used to it". Seriously dude? Seriously? How are you trying to come off as credible when it comes to discussing console-based editing when you say a thing like that?

[@keilmillerjr9701]

Arrows to move a cursor make more sense to 99% of all computer users. Using the arrow keys also works in helix.

[@windowsrefund]

@@keilmillerjr9701 Basing a defense on the perceived understanding of the majority is flawed. Even MORE people understand how to use pen and paper. If we're just going to go with "majority", then we should all just throw our systems out the winow and get back to writing by hand.

[@keilmillerjr9701]

@@windowsrefund Show me a gui text editor that doesn't use the arrow keys to move the cursor. Even nano in the terminal uses the arrow keys. Ask your friends and family members to use your computer and edit something in vi.

[@windowsrefund]

@@keilmillerjr9701 Again, it went right over your head. You consistently miss the larger point due to your obsession with satisfying the majority and lowest common denominator. I get the mentality though and see either windows or osx as being the right OS for you to run on your system. Those products were specifically designed for people with this mindset.

[@keilmillerjr9701]

@@windowsrefund No. I run arch with hyprland and ags-shell. My kids use it too. General usage is for steam and web browsing (kids), and programming in bash, ruby, python, etc.

[@omgitshim]

Getting rid of %s/foo/bar/g is a big thing for me. I might use your psych ward editor now