When I was in high school I found Sublime Text and learned “multiple cursors”. Since then, I’ve transitioned to vscode, mainly because I need LSP (without too much configuration work) for my work.
I keep hearing about how modal editing is faster and I would like to switch to a more performant editor. I’ve been looking at helix, as the 4th generation of the vi line of editors. Is anyone using it? Is it any good for the main code editor?
The problem that I have is that learning new editing keybindings would probably take me a month of time, before I get to the same amount of productivity (if I ever get here at all). So I’m looking for advice of people who have already done that before.
My code editing does involve a lot of “ctrl-arrow” to move around words, “ctrl-shift-arrow” to select words, “home/end” to move to beginning/end of the line, “ctrl-d” for “new cursor at next occurrence”, “shift-alt-down” for “new cursor in the line below”, “ctrl-shift-f” for “format file” and a few more to move around using LSP-provided “declaration”/“usages”.
I would have to unlearn all of that.
Also, I do use “ctrl-arrow” to edit this post. Have you changed keybindings in firefox too?
neovim. i much prefer the motions of helix, but there’s just some plugins i can’t live without.
I’ve been using Vim for over 10 years. The first few years I used it badly. Later I took time to really learn it. Now I can use it fairly decently, but I still learn new things every now and then.
It feels like a really good investment. It’s been around forever, it’s gonna be around forever, it’s installed on almost all computers, and you’re going to be forced to use it at some point or another.
I really enjoy being able to go to any computer and starting up a familiar editor, without installing or configuring stuff. I also use a very vanilla Vim. If a coworker’s laptop or some server has a different Vim config than mine, I can usually do
vim -u NONEto get back to a familiar place.I use the vi option or plugins for Sublime, PHPStorm, and Pycharm or whichever IDE I’m using. Works for chrome and Firefox too.
Fresh from university I found a job with terrible keyboards. After about 4 months I started to feel constant pain in my wrists. I then switched to vim.
And it solved my wrists issue. But also, I discovered a way to edit text that was so much optimized fat beyond my expectations.
I wrote this article for people that would like to familiarize with vi keybindings.
https://yannesposito.com/Scratch/en/blog/Learn-Vim-Progressively/
I swapped to neovim 10 months ago. Haven’t looked back. Actually, I’ve looked back a LOT for the first few weeks because I couldn’t figure out how to do certain things. But the more you learn the better it becomes. Not needing your mouse is SO good.
I used to use VSCodium, but in my quest to touch the mouse as little as possible I switched to Neovim.
Not dev but I’m in IT/Cybersec mostly as it’s much easier to find jobs there and I use vim just about everywhere, usually with tmux and i3 with custom vim-like keybinds (super+j move focus right etc), I use vim even on my phone in termux, with gboard.
I don’t use LSPs cause CBA but I only use Python and C and maybe occasionally bash for homelab stuff and I don’t have large projects (😭).
If I’m doing any ML stuff from scratch (not refining or writing API for local llm model or integrating it with another API but just building classifiers etc) for fun I use Jupyter. Such a wildly different way of coding honestly ngl it’s wild, but great when you need to document what you’re doing.
At uni I used to use fucking Visual Studio with C# and Netbeans with Java, but I learned it pretty well. I don’t think they ever even taught us how to run code outside those 😂
At work I use gedit and gnome terminal for navigation cuz it’s company time unless I’m personally interested in what I’m doing.
I keep hearing about how modal editing is faster
I’ve always been skeptical that optimizing text input speed would make a significant difference to overall performance. IMO if you are unhappy with your setup then look around but if you’re not you don’t need to have FOMO about it.
It depends. For fixing bugs, text editing speed does not matter. For explorative and iterative design it can matter. It just needs to be fast enough to not distract you or hold you back
That’s the thing: I do feel vscode being slow. On my work machine, it’s fine - it takes about two seconds to open a project from start. But on my older laptop, that’s a solid 10 sec before I can start editing.
Well, I’ve successfully used LSP for Sublime Text before. Would probably still use it if I hadn’t transitioned to Neovim recently.
I do still use sublime as a “note” app, where I a “cheatsheet” open with a bunch of common commands I need for our project + a todo.
I keep hearing about how modal editing is faster
Please, do yourself a favor and ignore that noise. It is more a question of like/dislike and training. Personal sidenote: I daily alternate between PhpStorm and Neovim. Can’t say doing things in either is faster/slower to any significant degree (PhpStorm is mostly there for the things I have not yet configered properly in Neovim, like looking through git history)
and I would like to switch to a more performant editor
This should be looked at and tested objectively: is it working with big files that is the problem? Or navigating the code base? Or something else? Maybe it is better to tweak vscode instead?
Throughout my career, I have used (in no particular order)
- Eclipse (as Android Studio)
- IntelliJ (as Android Studio)
- SublimeText
- VS Code
- IntelliJ (as IntelliJ)
- various CLI editors when sshing into servers (vim, nano, a few others)
Switching your muscle memory takes a long time, which is why you have things like spacemacs, or different keybind presets for almost all of these editors.
There is more value in understanding how to extend and customize your editor than in searching for a new one. Use whatever your workplace provides the best support for, and then customize it from there.
That’s how I ended up with a latex plugin for intellij
There is more value in understanding how to extend and customize your editor than in searching for a new one. Use whatever your workplace provides the best support for, and then customize it from there.
I think there’s something to be said for shaking up your environment periodically as well and trying new things. Sure, there’s a week where you edit at a snails pace, followed by a month where you edit a bit slower than normal, but different tools really do have different pros and cons.
For the code bases I’ve worked in, this evolved from necessity as the code files were so large many editors were struggling, the rules for the style so custom that editors can’t be properly configured to match, or the editor performance in general was questionable.
I went through a journey of sorts from IDEs to Electron based editors to Emacs and currently am working with Kakoune (and I’ve passed over a bunch of other editors like Sublime, Helix, and Zed that couldn’t meet my requirements or didn’t match my sensibilities – even though a thing or two here or there really was excellent). Pretty much every change has been the result of the editor pain points that couldn’t be addressed without actually working on the editor itself.
I use vim, or spacemacs with evil mode (emacs distribution with sensible shortcuts and vim emulation). Or VSCode with spacemacs emulation.
You will pass your current productivity in less than a month. All of the things you describe are easily done in VSCode with vim emulation (I prefer the full spacemacs emulation but it’s not actually a huge difference). You won’t have to move your hands away from the normal typing spot on your keyboard – no home and end, just 0 and $. No control+arrow keys, just w and b (or e or even more motion options). Highlighting is as easy as v and then motion commands. And there are so many more useful things that vim (and vim emulation) make simple and fast. Orthogonal VSCode features like multi cursors still work.
I mostly use Jetbrain’s IDE’s and NeoVIM when changing configs through the terminal.
NeoVim plus tmux.
Great multi dimensional way of operating. You have access to the terminal and your ide.
It’s beautiful
