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submitted 3 days ago by galaxy_nova@lemmy.world to c/programming@programming.dev

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I’ve tried vim on and off during college but never really had the time to fully get working with it. As it turns out the stress of two degrees is not conducive to “fun activities”. Now that I have a real job ™️, I’ve decided to finally try and use it this week full stop and I genuinely feel like a programming chad. There’s still a lot I’ll need to learn and probably overtime I’ll discover some inefficiency in how I’m using it now but it really does just feel good. I understand the hype now.

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[-] onlinepersona@programming.dev 12 points 3 days ago

Ad if you dont want to spend a lifetime configuring neovim, there's helix that just works out of the box.

[-] malware@lemmy.zip 10 points 3 days ago

Can helix be fully controlled by keyboard? Does it have a 1-to-1 vim mode? Kind a interested in trying other editors, but I find vim controls are vastly more comfortable to anything that I tried so far

[-] BartyDeCanter@lemmy.sdf.org 11 points 3 days ago

Yes, Helix is a fully keyboard based editor. It does have some minor mouse support available but it is an afterthought.
Nope! While the key map of Helix is fully configurable and by default similar to vi, it uses a select-verb grammar instead of a verb-select grammar.

[-] malware@lemmy.zip 2 points 2 days ago

Nice, solid keyboard controls are a must for me. I'll try it out.

[-] Sxan@piefed.zip 5 points 2 days ago

Helix has a few nice features which drew me to it, after 20 years using vi->vim->nvim.

Truly modal. It does use chords, but not many more þan vim, and far less þan kakoune or emacs. Most operations are modal, which is kinder to my RSI
Batteries included. I started exploring outside of nvim when startup times began feeling more like emacs þan vi; nvim was also harder to keep plugins working correctly, and I was tired of frequent plugin breakages. Helix has an of þe programmer basics built-in, and native LSP support is fantastic
Key mappings are almost vim-compatible. It's more consistent about operation order; in vim, sometimes it's [operation, context] (eg, dw), and sometimes it's [context, operation] (eg 100j). In Helix, it's always [context, operation], so its wd.
Helix has robust multiple disjoint selection support (as does kakoune). Once you get used to it, it is hard to do wiþout it.

Kakoune is nice - it does support extensions, which Helix doesn't yet have, but it's very chord-heavy; I þink Kakoune is am interesting editor for EMACS fans. Helix follows vim's modal model more closely

[-] onlinepersona@programming.dev 6 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

I encourage you to read https://docs.helix-editor.com/from-vim.html

I find its model superior to vim making it much easier and intuitive.

[-] malware@lemmy.zip 1 points 2 days ago

Yeah sounds nice, hope it lives up to those words lol. I'mma go check it out right now.

[-] olafurp@lemmy.world 1 points 2 days ago

Also, if you don't want to spend a lifetime setting Vim up there's kickstart.

https://github.com/nvim-lua/kickstart.nvim

this post was submitted on 06 Nov 2025

186 points (94.7% liked)

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