HN Reader

Worth mentioning that while this was very nice work by a Helix enthusiast, it was proposed as a replacement for the official docs and mostly rejected, and for good reasons IMO. An instructive discussion!

https://github.com/helix-editor/helix/pull/12127#issuecommen...

It's rarely a good idea to do a bunch of work on a big change to an open source project in a direction that has not been validated by the maintainers. Or at least, if you do, do it for your own education and don't have high expectations that it will be merged. The contributor in question had a very good attitude about it.

A while ago I made a dense cheat sheet for Helix. It's a touch out of date, but still possibly useful. https://github.com/stevenhoy/helix-cheat-sheet

I'd prefer a more honest tutorial. Who is this editor for? and show the kinds of problems it was designed to solve, nobody makes generalist text editors anymore and nobody needs a generalist editor. Like are you really trying to convince poets to use this? Of course not, this tutorial relies on some domain expert seeing it and mapping the functionality show in the examples to their problem.

Also the utility of these kinds of editors goes way down when you aren't doing many quick edits of arbitrary files ( which points to a larger workflow problem though perhaps unavoidable for some )

Currently, I'm using VS Code with Vim keybindings (through the Neovim plugin). My workflow (C/C++/Rust) involves multiple panes open, using the lldb debugger, goto/peek definitions, CMake integration w/ active target compilation on Ctrl+Shift+B, clang format on save, LLM-powered tab-autocomplete, and IntelliSense powered by `compile_commands.json`.

Is switching to Helix worth it? Can I get more-or-less equivalent functionality with Helix?

Isn’t the built in tutor build to interactively teach exactly what this site contains?

Does Helix have no way to go back to the last editing position when re-opening a file? Similar to: '" in vim? That is going to be a deal-breaker for me. One reason I use vim over many other options is that I jump in and out of files a lot, having to find my last position in many cases is a chore.

I really would love to move to helix but they can be… stubborn about what gets into the core. And if you start having to go to a plugin (which isn’t even possible last I looked) to get table stakes features in, it kind of defeats the purpose of a modern batteries included modal editor. But it’s still a cool thing I’m glad exists.

Can someone explain to me the concept being Helix? I never got it.

From a casual reading, it looks like vim with no text objects and no support for ed commands so basically vim stripped of two of the main things that makes it good.

I understand it wants to be a more rational successor but while I got how sam tried to achieve that by breaking the limit on line editing, making clever use of mouse selections and switching ed for a new non line limited syntax (how I wish ssam had replaced sed), I don’t get the Helix value proposition.

I keep meaning to get back into Helix, I'm super close to setting up an "vi=hx" alias. I had Claude make me a cheat sheet, but I haven't gone over it, here it is if it helps anyone: https://box.linsomniac.com/HelixCheatSheet.pdf

I guess Helix is made to have appeal for Vim users. At the same time, times change and usually people expect less step learning curve (including myself!).

I would really appreciate visible-by-default hints, alike in Linear.app. Then, learning shortcuts becomes organic, rather one need to keep tutorial open, or have a cheatsheet of some sorts.

Can any Helix users share how the muscle memory from vim is working out? I’d really like to give it a go but I’m worried I’ll pollute my memory of basic vim commands. I’m bad enough remembering cut/copy/paste keyboard shortcuts in different OS/applications.

I keep trying Helix but just got hit by wq freeze issue, opened since 2022, so I wonder sometimes if its ready.

https://github.com/helix-editor/helix/issues/2059

Great to see so much Helix content on HN lately. Excited to give it a try!

your descriptions of what the j and k keys do in normal mode are reversed: j moves the cursor one line BELOW and k moves the cursor one line ABOVE.

Many complain here about the helix maintainers pace and PR rejection rate. I embrace it. It’s opinionated software developed in the open and you can fork any time. I prefer this model of strict high quality governance and a “no” as default to keep their vision clear.