Claude Code: Now in Beta in Zed

I want to try Zed but the Helix mode seems quite young. Vim mode sounds good, but i just can't move away from Helix mode. (oh and of course, my own modifications to Helix's input config)

My difficulty in finding editors that fit my desired input scheme kinda reminds me of the old pre-LSP days. Where you'd chose an editor based on it's language features. I wonder if we need some sort of common editor interface to allow these sort of text editing primitives to work in new editors, as it seems to be considerable friction.

If you are already familiar with Vim bindings is Helix's object then action really worth that much?

Helix seems to have good LSP support from what I can tell? The only language I use at $WORK that doesn't have full support is GraphQL which lacks auto indent.

If you want to try something similar to Helix in emacs, there's meow-mode. While I'm not a helix user myself, it shouldn't be too difficult to get meow to work like helix.

I agree, I've fantasized about an editor with a truly pluggable editing model which is decoupled from the other parts.

Yi was kind of designed like this, I believe. You could compile in an emacs-like model, a vim-like model, or presumably make your own model.

I've used Helix and Kakoune in addition to Emacs and Vim, but dealing with the limitations/featureset/plugin treadmill gets a little tiring.

I have been following Zed, and it seems that they have rearchitected things to enable adding Helix mode and making the editing model a bit more modular, but it's still fairly new. They are fixing bugs pretty quickly. I will have to try it again.

They have a nice discussion here:

https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/discussions/6447

They reference Ki, which also looks cool, and they out some of Helix's inconsistencies in their comparison: https://ki-editor.github.io/ki-editor/docs/comparisons/

I prefered Kakoune to Helix (it was more consistent). But to your point, being able to swap these things out more easily would let you choose an editor based on features, and not tradeoff between features and an ergonomic editing model.

Ironically you can use Ki inside of VSCode (and I know you can use Vim that way too), but VSCode is so darn bloated and slow...

I had the exact same problem. I was so stoked to try helix mode and then realized it obviously doesn’t have any of my backspace shortcuts. Duh, but still… back to helix!

For me, definitely. Plus it's quite the muscle memory switch. I switched to Kakoune ages ago, and then eventually Helix because i liked its design a bit more.

Helix itself seems quite young - and first time I’m hearing of it.

I thought the same, but I gave Helix a shot for fun a couple years ago and never looked back. It really does feel better/more ergonomic, but the greatest benefit is that almost everything you need is built in. I spent way too much time fiddling with Vim and NeoVim configs.

It’s about 4 years old, twice as old as Zed!

The truly pluggable editor is emacs. I too spent months trying out neovim, then emacs, then finding helix. Spent a year on helix, then zed because I would rather have something more complete, and brought with me all i could of helix modal editing.

But emacs. Emacs is the one that can truly become anything you like. And with lsp and treesitter being finally in it. I've finally came to my senses and started building my helix in it.

Neovim can run in server mode, where other editors send it user input and then Neovim sends back the buffer. This is how I use vim in VSCode — not the Vim extension but the Neovim extension, which uses the real Neovim, which of course reads my Neovim config and plugins and makes them available to VSCode. So it seems like helix “just” needs a server mode, and then you can integrate it into any editor.

Same age:

commit b400449a58507cca1fa007197929c2cfd6beabbe

Author: Nathan Sobo <nathan@zed.dev>

Date: Sat Feb 20 10:02:34 2021 -0700

    Start rebuilding with a cleanly-separated UI framework

I wish some radical team just says fuck yes, we're gonna make Emacs fast and actually accomplishes it.

It's definitely easier with LLMs now, but still considerably hard.

Wow!

Oh what, there’s a Helix mode now?

Been wanting to learn Helix more and using it for small edits but never saw a Helix mode in any editor yet

It’s exciting that Zed even has a Helix mode. That was a big moment for Helix.

Last time I tried it, though, I immediately ran into parts of the keymap that hadn’t been translated yet. I’m already at my limit of tools in beta mode/built from my own fork, so I switched back to Vim mode – where the team is on record explaining their thorough testing methodology.

As a Helix user of two years, I sometimes wonder if I actually like the Helix keymap (certainly some parts are nicer than Vim’s) or if I simply tolerate it because of how nice it is to get a polished TUI IDE out of the box. Either way, my muscle memory expects Helix mode now, rather than Vim.

Epsilon is fast emacs

LLMs don't make it any easier at all.

But the team is out there ; )