This is Helix, a relatively new modal text editor
that could be the definitive successor to Vim and Neovim. So, today I will tell you my impressions
using Helix from the point of view of a basic, non-expert user, and I will show you the main
differences that it has when compared to Neovim. And, finally, I will tell you if I think that
it can dethrone Vim and Neovim. Helix comes with great features out of the box, and the first
one I want to show you are the color schemes. By simply typing ":theme ", Helix will show me all
the available themes and I can use the Tab Key to browse through them. You don't need to install
any extension to get these themes. They come built in with the editor. So, this is already
a big plus of Helix, because in Vim and Neovim, you would need to download and install these
themes yourself, and the process is not precisely trivial. As of this recording, Helix
comes with a total of 110 themes. What you are seeing is only the first page of themes but, as
you can see now, there are three pages in total. Another important feature that Helix comes
with is multiple cursors. When editing a file in normal mode you simply press shift
C, and an additional cursor is added below the original cursor. And then, you can edit the
file: you can go into insert mode for example, remove these characters, change something, go
back into normal mode and press comma to remove the extra cursors. In vim and Neovim, you would
need to install a plugin to get multiple cursors, so this is another win for Helix. I also really
like this menu that shows up on some actions, for example, here I pressed G which is the
key to go to a certain point in the file, and Helix is showing me different places I may
want to go to, including go to the top of the screen, go to bottom, and go to center. And I use
these movements a lot for quick navigation in the file. There is also tree-sitter, which creates a
syntax tree of your source code and allows you to do things such as moving to the next function,
moving to the previous function, or moving to different constructs in the programming language
that you are using. This is another functionality that in vim and neovim would need to be installed
with a plugin. And the final feature I want to mention is LSP, or Language Server Protocol,
which will allow you to have auto-complete, as you can see on the screen, among other things.
The setup is relatively easy. If you execute the Helix binary with the `--health` flag, it will
show you all the languages that it supports, and it will also tell you what you need to install
in order to use the LSP for that language. In my case, I want to have LSP for the C language so
here, as you can see, Helix is telling me that I need to install clangd. So I will install
it using my distributions package manager. So, now when I run Helix with the "--health"
flag, it will show me that the LSP is okay. Now, I will open a C file using Helix and let's,
for example, start typing a line here. As you can see, it's going to start suggesting me some
options to autocomplete. And now if I delete an important line from this file, for example, this
one, as you can see down here Helix is telling me that there are two errors. If I press space and
D it will show me the errors that it has found, and as you can see, all we needed to do was
installing clangd. So, installing an LSP in Helix is much easier than in other editors.
In summary, Helix tries to create a good user experience out of the box, as opposed to other
modal text editors that are very barebones and require the user to install plugins in order
to get basic functionality. And, in my opinion, the Helix approach is much better. One reason is
time, because with the Helix approach, you don't need to spend time learning how to use a plug-in
manager, then looking for plugins on the web, selecting them, and then installing them. But,
another important reason is the fact that all of these features are implemented by the same
Helix developers, which means that the whole experience will feel cohesive and consistent. In
Vim and Neovim, if you start installing plugins, it sometimes may feel like you're just sticking
things together with duct tape, instead of creating a full consistent editor experience.
So, that's why I prefer the Helix approach. But now, I want to talk about other
important differences that Helix has with vim and neovim, and here is where I have some
reservations, and you may have them as well. The most fundamental difference is that Helix
has a different text editing model. In Helix, you first select the text that you want
to edit, and then you specify the action that you want to apply to that selection. For
example, if I want to delete the current word, I first type W, which selects the current
word, and then I type D to delete it. In Vim, you would do the opposite: you first
say that you want to delete something, so you type D, and then you specify what you
want to delete, in this case, W, for word. These models are known as selection-action and
action-selection or object-verb and verb-object. The advantage of the Helix model is that you can
see what you are deleting before you delete it, because selections are always visible, and this
advantage is valid for all the different actions: replacing text, 'yanking' it, etc. However, it
also means that every time you use a word motion, you also select the word that
you moved through. For example, let's say that I want to move my cursor
to the end of this word, so I press W, and now my cursor is at the end of the
word, but I have also selected the word, and if I go into insert mode now, by pressing
I, my cursor will go all the way back to the beginning of the selection, not to the
character that was just before the cursor. So, if I execute a word motion, and
then I want to go into insert mode just before the current character, I have
to first deselect the word by pressing semicolon (;), and now I can type I, and
I go into insert mode before the cursor. So, is the Helix model better than the Vim model?
I am not entirely convinced by the Helix model, because I think it imposes a slightly higher
mental load on the user. When using Helix, I feel like I have to be more aware, and keep
track of the selections that I make while editing text, for the reasons I mentioned
before. The difference is not really big, but it's noticeable. It could be just because
I haven't used Helix for long enough to get used to it at an intuitive level, and maybe
if I keep using it the Helix, the selection model will become second nature to me, but even
then, from the point of view of a Neovim user, I don't know if being able to see the selections
before the action is worth such an effort. So, I don't really know if the Helix model
is better than than the Vim model. And now, let's talk about configuration because,
in general, I like how Helix works in this aspect, but there is just one important thing that
I really don't like about it. Helix looks for configuration files in ".config/helix",
in our home directory and, as you can see, Helix uses the TOML language for configuration.
The main configuration file is called config.toml. This is my config.toml, it's very simple. Here, I
enable automatic insertion of pairs to parentheses and brackets, and I also configure the mode
indicator to change color when I change mode, for example, if I go into insert mode, it
changes the color, if I go into select mode, it also changes color, etc. And there's a couple
more basic configurations here. And, in general, I like how this config file works. I like the fact
that it's organized in sections, and the fact that Helix configurations files are much shorter and
more readable than Vim files written in Vimscript. However, the thing that I really don't
like is that configuring indentation width is more cumbersome than in vim and
neovim. For example, here I am editing a C file that has tabs as indentation, and
these tabs appear as two characters wide, as you can see. I want to increase these
tabs to look four characters wide. So, if you search in the web you will find that
there's currently no way to globally change the indentation with in Helix in a persistent
way. You can only change the indentation for specific languages. For that, you need to
create a file called languages.toml and define the configurations for your languages
there, but even then, the Helix documentation doesn't explain which of these attributes
need to be included in order for it to work. After some trial and error, I arrived at this
configuration, which works for my purposes. So, even though this was not that hard, I still felt
that the Helix experience is bad in this aspect. You have to guess what attributes are needed and
which ones are not. There is definitely some level of trial and error involved in order to configure
even one language. Maybe I am missing something and I made a dumb mistake here, but even if that's
the case, Helix didn't make it easy for me to do the right thing on the first try. So that's
something I dislike about Helix configuration, and it's something that could be improved,
on both the functionality front and the documentation front. However, the good thing
is that the rough edges of Helix like this one will probably be improved as Helix gains
more adoption and continues progressing. And a final thing to mention, which
may be a deal breaker for some of you, is that Helix doesn't support plugins yet.
I personally don't care too much about it, because the features that come out of the box
are sufficient for me, but some of you may have more advanced or specific needs when it comes
to text editing, so this is a thing to note. However, the Helix team has plans to
implement a plug-in system. You can check the discussions section on their
GitHub repo to get more information. And now, let's recap and see all of the pros
and cons of Helix. Some of the the pros are: first, the fact that Helix comes with
a lot of functionality out of the box, like multiple cursors, tree-sitter, color schemes, and the contextual menus that are of great help
to remind you of the available key bindings and commands. The fact that Helix comes with
all of these out of the box also makes it be more cohesive and consistent than other
editors. The ease of installation of LSPs in Helix is also something notable when
compared to vim and neovim. And, finally, the config files in Helix are much better, because
they are usually much shorter and readable. In the cons, we can mention lack of plugin
support, which is something that will get solved eventually, and some pain points like how hard
it is to configure the indentation width, which I hope will also get solved at some point. There
are also some important differences that I can't classify directly under the pros or the cons. So,
the editing model in Helix is different from the editing model in vim and neovim. Some people may
prefer the Helix model, but for Vim users, it's going to take some time before they get fully used
to it, and I should also mention the fact that not all keybindings from Helix are the same as Vim,
so that will also take some time to get used to. And the final question: can Helix dethrone
vim and neovim? I think that two conditions need to be met in order for Helix to dethrone
them. The first one is that Vim users have to be convinced that the selection action model is
better, or at least as good as the vim model. Unfortunately the only way for a vim user to
decide this is to use Helix for a relatively long time and get used to it, and I don't think
most users are willing to do that. And the second condition is that Helix fixes some aspects of
the editor that degrade the user experience, like the process for changing indentation
width. I think Helix has a lot of potential and could eventually dethrone vim and
neovim if these conditions are met, but the first condition will take some
considerable time. What is your opinion? leave a comment below and if you liked the
video, please like and subscribe. Goodbye.
