This has been my main editor for prose and code for a few years now (Sublime Text -> Atom -> Vim -> Helix). Overall, it has been great. Many LSPs work almost out-of-the-box, and my config is a fraction the size of my old .vimrc.
Surprisingly, it didn’t take that long to update my Vim muscle memory. Days or weeks, maybe? However, I still have mixed feelings about modal editors in general, and most of my gripes with Helix are actually about modal editors and/or console editors in general.
Tried it again few days ago. I kinda get that currently you can only use AI on Helix through LSP, but on top of that it does not have auto-refreshing files when changed outside - makes it really hard to work with external AIs, as I'm just constantly worrying if I'm editing a stale file.
I was feeling this pain also; so I switched my workflow to watching file changes with lazygit, and then switching to helix to make small tweaks.
Another option you may want to try is mux (github.com/coder/mux). It wraps the LLM in a nice interface which has the ability to do line/block comments on changes by the LLM that then goes goes into your next prompt. It’s very early stage though: v0.19.0.
How do other editors do this, if they don't use LSPs? Helix specifically choses LSP as the integration mechanism (in combination with TreeSitter) for supporting different programming languages, because it is a language-agnostic protocol and therefore only needs to be implemented once. Is there some established AI-agnostic protocol/interface? I don't think MCP would work here?
My default editor for the past couple years. Love the simplicity, speed, and the fact I can navigate comfortably with just the keyboard. Plus Elixir LSP integration is a cherry on top.
Do have a look at the second question in the FAQ :).
I do find Helix very impressive. I remember the Python LSP working without any configuration whatsoever.
However, I have vim muscle memory built over 25 years of use. I already struggle switching between Emacs and vim (or its equivalents) - for example, after a period of vim usage, I would press ESC repeatedly in Emacs, three of which are enough close a window. While Helix borrows modal editing from vim, it introduces subtle (and meaningful - I have to admit) variations, which unfortunately wreaks havoc with my muscle memory. Maybe the worst part about muscle memory is that unlearning is almost impossible. My dilemma, not Helix's fault...
I have been using an ergonomics keyboard for a while and find it impossible to go back to normal keyboard.
For the last two weeks, I was forced to work at a normal keyboard. After initial pain for one day, I got back to typing at normal speed. Without losing my comfort with the ergonomic one. I can now just context switch. It wasn't easy though.
Perhaps you will also become comfortable with both vim and helix after the initial struggle?
"However, I have vim muscle memory built over 25 years of use."
Me too and it took a view attempts but I'm on Helix now and don't regret it. Once you are over the most prominent discrepancies like dd and G it's an uphill battle.
I really wanted to like Helix, it's a great software, works out of the box. I dedicated energy to unlearn my vim habits and learn the helix way. I'm now able to use it fairly effectively, but eventually I just came to the conclusion the bindings are done the way they are due to simpler implementation, not simpler user interface. I'm back to neovim for small updates and zed in vim mode for larger code editing.
Not having to deal with neovim plugins is a HUGE win. Using neovim with plugins feels like using a rolling Linux distro, you never know what breaks next. That's what I use zed, personally. It's the best modern vi-like editor, in my opinion.
Have you tried Ki Editor[0]? It seems to be more into direction that you are looking for. It is not as mature as the rest of the editors but the editing model is definitely an improvement from ux perspective
The different bindings vs Vim was actually what stopped me using it. I really really wanted to love it and love a lot of the motivation and principles behind it, but unlearning decades of muscle memory is an absolute nightmare.
I wrote my own modal-mode extension for vscode/cursor because couldn't get the VIM-ones to function like I wanted. During that time, I thought that I should look into Kakoune and Helix as those seemed to represent a true iteration on the paradigm. Being able to see what you're about to change makes complete sense, as does the "multi-cursor first" approach.
However, after a few weeks, I ended up rewriting things to be more classic VIM-like after all. This might have just been muscle memory refusing to yield, I am not sure. One thing I remember though, was that the multi-cursor+selection approach only really helps when you can see everything you're about to change on the screen. For large edits, most selections will be out of the scroll window and not really helping.
I still haven't written it off completely, though with AI I increasingly find myself writing more prose than keywords and brackets, so I am not sure it's going to feel worth it.
I desperately wish Helix would support virtual text (code folder, markdown links just showing the text when not selected), but the default keybinds and the way that selecting and editing text work just works too well in my brain to go anywhere else
I tried using it once by compiling it from sources. Even a release build is several hundred megabytes in size, which I find pretty wasteful. After a little investigation I found, that it has many plugins in form of a shared library, and each of them has pretty huge size, presumably because the whole Rust standard library is statically linked.
Language grammars are ~200-250MB though.
They are in a separate folder, and often they are all bundled to support all the languages.
Some of them are HUGE.
.rwxr-xr-x 4.6M aa 6 Mar 21:52 ocaml-interface.so
.rwxr-xr-x 4.6M aa 6 Mar 21:52 rpmspec.so
.rwxr-xr-x 4.9M aa 6 Mar 21:52 tlaplus.so
.rwxr-xr-x 5.1M aa 6 Mar 21:52 ocaml.so
.rwxr-xr-x 5.1M aa 6 Mar 21:52 c-sharp.so
.rwxr-xr-x 5.3M aa 6 Mar 21:52 kotlin.so
.rwxr-xr-x 5.4M aa 6 Mar 21:52 ponylang.so
.rwxr-xr-x 5.5M aa 6 Mar 21:52 slang.so
.rwxr-xr-x 6.1M aa 6 Mar 21:52 crystal.so
.rwxr-xr-x 6.8M aa 6 Mar 21:52 fortran.so
.rwxr-xr-x 9.2M aa 6 Mar 21:52 nim.so
.rwxr-xr-x 9.5M aa 6 Mar 21:52 julia.so
.rwxr-xr-x 9.9M aa 6 Mar 21:52 sql.so
.rwxr-xr-x 16M aa 6 Mar 21:52 lean.so
.rwxr-xr-x 18M aa 6 Mar 21:52 verilog.so
.rwxr-xr-x 22M aa 6 Mar 21:52 systemverilog.so
That's exactly what I found. Why these files should exist at all? Some other IDEs just have a bunch of highlighting rules based on regular expressions and have a folder of tiny XML grammar files instead of a folder of bloaty shared libraries.
Because it's far more reliable to use proper parsers instead of a bunch of regular expressions. Most languages cannot be properly parsed with regexes.
Those files are compiled tree-sitter grammars, read up on why it exists and where it is used instead of me poorly regurgitating official documentation:
That would waste CPU time and introduce additional delays when opening files.
They could probably lazily install the grammars like neovim does, but as someone who doesn't have much faith in the reliability of internet infrastructure, I'll personally take it...
Just ran `:TSInstall all` in neovim out of curiosity, and the results were predictable:
If disk space is important for your use case, I guess filesystem compression would save far more than just compressing binaries with upx. btrfs+zstd handle those .so well:
$ compsize ~/.local/share/nvim/lazy/nvim-treesitter/parser
Type Perc Disk Usage Uncompressed Referenced
TOTAL 11% 26M 231M 231M
$ compsize /usr/lib/helix/runtime/grammars
Type Perc Disk Usage Uncompressed Referenced
TOTAL 12% 23M 184M 184M
I haven't opened a text editor to code in months and probably won't need to anymore. Goodbye vim and intellij, nice knowing you. It was a good while it lasted. Glad I haven't invested decades into emacs like some of my colleagues.
"Within C++, there is a much smaller and cleaner language struggling to get out."
Helix carries a baggage of ideas from Vim. It does not have consistent and transferable keybinds. It does not have composition of ideas:
You can move to the next line in the buffer editor with `k` but to move down to the next line in the file explorer you have to do `ctrl+n`?
Vim is like C, Helix is like C++ and Ki Editor is like Rust.
Surprisingly, it didn’t take that long to update my Vim muscle memory. Days or weeks, maybe? However, I still have mixed feelings about modal editors in general, and most of my gripes with Helix are actually about modal editors and/or console editors in general.
Code folding is a feature I’m still waiting for.
Another option you may want to try is mux (github.com/coder/mux). It wraps the LLM in a nice interface which has the ability to do line/block comments on changes by the LLM that then goes goes into your next prompt. It’s very early stage though: v0.19.0.
I have reload-all bound to Ctrl-r
How do other editors do this, if they don't use LSPs? Helix specifically choses LSP as the integration mechanism (in combination with TreeSitter) for supporting different programming languages, because it is a language-agnostic protocol and therefore only needs to be implemented once. Is there some established AI-agnostic protocol/interface? I don't think MCP would work here?
AFAIK no
I do find Helix very impressive. I remember the Python LSP working without any configuration whatsoever.
However, I have vim muscle memory built over 25 years of use. I already struggle switching between Emacs and vim (or its equivalents) - for example, after a period of vim usage, I would press ESC repeatedly in Emacs, three of which are enough close a window. While Helix borrows modal editing from vim, it introduces subtle (and meaningful - I have to admit) variations, which unfortunately wreaks havoc with my muscle memory. Maybe the worst part about muscle memory is that unlearning is almost impossible. My dilemma, not Helix's fault...
For the last two weeks, I was forced to work at a normal keyboard. After initial pain for one day, I got back to typing at normal speed. Without losing my comfort with the ergonomic one. I can now just context switch. It wasn't easy though.
Perhaps you will also become comfortable with both vim and helix after the initial struggle?
Me too and it took a view attempts but I'm on Helix now and don't regret it. Once you are over the most prominent discrepancies like dd and G it's an uphill battle.
[0] https://github.com/usagi-flow/evil-helix
[0]: https://ki-editor.org/
[0]: https://github.com/martanne/vis
However, after a few weeks, I ended up rewriting things to be more classic VIM-like after all. This might have just been muscle memory refusing to yield, I am not sure. One thing I remember though, was that the multi-cursor+selection approach only really helps when you can see everything you're about to change on the screen. For large edits, most selections will be out of the scroll window and not really helping.
I still haven't written it off completely, though with AI I increasingly find myself writing more prose than keywords and brackets, so I am not sure it's going to feel worth it.
That's why the Ki editor has a feature called Reveal Cursors (https://ki-editor.org/docs/normal-mode/space-menu#-cursor-re...), which is specifically made to solve this issue
Which is still a net positive over the alternative?
I think 29MB is still huge for a terminal text editor, but nevertheless not "hundreds".
Those files are compiled tree-sitter grammars, read up on why it exists and where it is used instead of me poorly regurgitating official documentation:
https://tree-sitter.github.io/tree-sitter
The whole Linux release is 15mb, but it uncompresses to 16MB binary and 200MB grammars on disk.
Why do we need to have 40MB of Verilog grammars on disk when 99% of people don't use them?
They could probably lazily install the grammars like neovim does, but as someone who doesn't have much faith in the reliability of internet infrastructure, I'll personally take it...
Just ran `:TSInstall all` in neovim out of curiosity, and the results were predictable:
If disk space is important for your use case, I guess filesystem compression would save far more than just compressing binaries with upx. btrfs+zstd handle those .so well: