https://xkcd.com/378/

Couldn’t help myself

That sounds tasty, where do I buy it?

To you, @[email protected], and anyone else planning to do the switch:

Back when I was still a VSC(odium) user, you needed to perform a small tweak to regain access to the quite useful extensions marketplace (in the sense of, paste the extension ID, see the same results as a M$ VSCode user*): There is a file named product.json which allows you to “regain” access if you populate it with the following values:

{
  "extensionsGallery": {
    "serviceUrl": "https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/_apis/public/gallery",
    "itemUrl": "https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items",
    "cacheUrl": "https://vscode.blob.core.windows.net/gallery/index",
    "controlUrl": ""
  }
}

(Taken from my old dotfiles, so this may be outdated, not sure. Also, you’ll have to look up the location of this file, it will differ depending on OS. On macOS it goes in ~/Library/Application Support/VSCodium.)

*If you do not need this 1:1 identical functionality, you may try the Open VSX marketplace. But especially in a class setting, I found this very useful, since all the tutorials/instructions will work without needing adaptation.

Immediately after you install helix, you can start working, no config required. It’s really nice.

It also has OOTB LSP, unlike in neovim where you have to setup manually for each installed LSP, helix just detects it. I also personally think it has better keybinds than neovim.

But it still doesn’t have a plugin system, and it’s quite opinionated. They’re both amazing, and great options. Just depends on what you want in an editor; customizability, or do you want it to just work.

I switched after development ended on the package manager I was using on neovim. I didn’t at that moment want to simplify my vimconfig, so I looked into helix.

Helix highlights the action you take, so if for example, you are deleting 5 lines, you select the lines first then hit delete. Sometimes the vim actions end up taking fewer keystrokes though. And I still prefer some ways vim does things. And I don’t always agree with the kakoune inspiration of helix (I haven’t used kakoune, just going by what the docs say) - for example, movement always selects text which I then have to unhighlight.

But the biggest reason I stuck to helix was sane LSP defaults out of the box with minimal config. I was tired of having to fix LSP related bugs in my vim config after package updates.

TLDR: saner defaults for helix + lazy to fix my bloated vimconfig.

i have sort of done this. the main thing is that the reversed object-verb command model just… latches onto your brain. this is from kakoune of course, but it just makes a lot of sense coming from vimland. multicursor is also nice because it removes some modes, meaning there is less state to keep in your head. finally, the plug-and-play nature of helix means you can have an lsp-enabled environment from the word go, with no configuration.

The thing about good plugins is relative - I just have vis-pairs, but I am not a seasoned developer (I’m not even a formal developer/CS person, just a graphic designer doing frontend and a tiny bit of backend!) so I don’t really miss anything else. vis’ phylosophy relies on the unix-as-ide concept, though. Still I do know that there is stuff like a LSP plugin.

What I really miss from vim is buffers. vis still does not have a client/server feature so you still have to rely in its allegedly temporary split panes kinda solution. It seems vis’ main developer got some personal issues going on so volunteers are doing some little changes here and there but with so few manpower it doesn’t seem like those needed big changes are happening anytime soon. Hence why I’m trying to spread its gospel in hopes to get people interested in contributing to it.