> Being a lazy person, I never bothered looking up VS Code shortcuts. Because the learning curve for Helix is slightly steeper, you have to learn those shortcuts that make moving around feel so easy.
This doesn't make sense: if you were truly lazy, you wouldn't spend any effort learning a more complicated app, you'd simply not switch!
> with a few knobs for minor preferences. I am subject to choice paralysis, so making me configure an editor before I’ve even started editing is the best way to tank my productivity.
There are a couple of hundreds of options https://docs.helix-editor.com/editor.html and even more hundreds of keybinds https://docs.helix-editor.com/keymap.html to reconfigure, so you can knob yourself to death with Helix just like with any other configurable app. And the way out is the same as with vim - just pick someone else who has done it and has published the results before dying and use those!
> And the way out is the same as with vim - just pick someone else who has done it
I think the crucial thing here is that most people don't do it, because it works out of the box. You can change any of the keybindings and any of a few hundred settings if you want, but the defaults are good, so you don't have to. My helix config sets the theme and soft-wrap and that's about it.
In what way do vim default keybinds not work vs Helix's since they seem to be very similar (outside of the whole selection-first behavior inversion)?
In general, I agree that good defaults is the way to go, and vim is worse here (except for the theme, helix's default is bad), though again, the alternative isn't a many knobs paralysis, but a better starting set.
Oh, vim's keybindings are fine. But vim is missing LSP, completion, file pickers / fuzzy finding, surround operations, easymotion jumps, and displaying buffers in the tab line. Those need to be added with plugins.
That's what's clogging up my init.lua, not keybindings. I'm glad I can adjust keybindings in both helix and vim. It's the plugins I resent, and with helix, these features are bundled in.
Not sure this is what the OP had in mind but in my experience Helix just ships with more keybinds than bare vim/nvim. Many of the nice keybinds shipped by LazyVim that I can't live without now (symbol search, LSP jumps, treesitter navigation etc) work out of the box in Helix.
As a long time user of both Emacs (since 18.52) and Neovim and now Helix, I find your last assertion to be false. While it is true that there are many options (though not as many as either Emacs or Neovim), in Helix you cannot write code or install someone else's code to modify your editor. In the past I've spent a good amount of time trying out, integrating, and debugging various packages for Neovim and Emacs. In Helix I might try a new option setting, but the time involved is minuscule compared to what you might spend customizing other editors.
I use NeoVim, not Helix, but I think it's more about sane defaults then the amount of customization. Out of the box NeoVim is just a basic modal text editor and not much more. You have to dive in and start configuring to get the real power out of it.
Helix does a lot of the heavy lifting for you.
Also, as a side note, I feel like trying to use someone else's config in NeoVim is a path to madeness.
Ya, I found the author's justifications for decisions pretty unconvincing.
Of course VSCode keybindings aren't great, but there are excellent Vim keybindings for VSCode, and that's the only thing about Vim that really matters. There are even experimental Helix keybindings for VSCode, and that's the only thing about Helix that really matters. Everything else is just commodified IDE functionality, and VSCode does that best.
And sure, Microsoft is not the kind of company I want to be entirely reliant on. But VSCode is MIT-licensed. There are already tons of forks for various purposes. Switching from VSCode to Helix for this reason is sort of like switching from Chrome to Lynx because you don't like Google. Why not just use Chromium, or Brave? With the level of adoption and support for VSCode, you can bet on well-supported forks popping up the moment Microsoft does anything truly destructive with it.
I mean, if you just want to try out and learn Helix, that's great, but the usability and morality pretense is distracting.
This doesn't make sense: if you were truly lazy, you wouldn't spend any effort learning a more complicated app, you'd simply not switch!
> with a few knobs for minor preferences. I am subject to choice paralysis, so making me configure an editor before I’ve even started editing is the best way to tank my productivity.
There are a couple of hundreds of options https://docs.helix-editor.com/editor.html and even more hundreds of keybinds https://docs.helix-editor.com/keymap.html to reconfigure, so you can knob yourself to death with Helix just like with any other configurable app. And the way out is the same as with vim - just pick someone else who has done it and has published the results before dying and use those!