I switched to helix last year after over twenty years of vim. I really like helix, but it did take some getting used to. Using multiple cursors instead of repeated commands etc

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 NONE to get back to a familiar place.

Neovim genuinely makes me happy. I love it to bits.

I left a comment before but I thought I’d address the concerns around modal editing. It’s not as hard as it seems, once you wrap your head around hjkl you’ll be fine.

Use Lazyvim to get started and install the vim plugin in vscode. Try it qutebrowser too you won’t look back honestly.

Consider helix too, it works out of the box but the keys are slightly different to Vim which makes it challenging for me.

vscodium and neovim extension

Helix because it’s easy to setup and hassle free, and it runs well on my 2009 ASUS Eee

Zed and Helix for the GNU/Linux side, and VSCodium for the Windows side.

vscodium. Easy to use for beginners (i’m a beginner too), fully open-source, all microsoft tracking binaries removed. Aviable for Windows, Linux, macOS, darwin, propably bsd, or even as a webview, and supports a lot of architectures. Great for intrepeted languages, but supports compiled ones too

I started with neovim because I hate my laptop’s mousepad, and that’s often pushed as a benefit of modal editors, not needing the mouse. After I used it for a while I found that not only could you do stuff easily that would be difficult in, say vs code, but it was also pretty fun. It’s honestly a bit of a power trip sometimes, makes me feel like a 90s tv hacker. Also plugins. So many neat plugins.

I hate to be that guy but (neo)vim has served me well for too long. I don’t even use any crazy maps or plugins; it’s just comfy.

Neovim, Emacs, Helix and VSCode.

Zed has been fun.

VsCode and Pycharm are just too slow for me. You need a very fast machine with a lot of RAM.

I use Lapce, which could be a great native alternative to VS-Code (Also it’s built with Rust, this is for the Rustaceans)

There was a time where I used Geany as well, I still like it

NeoVim plus tmux.

Great multi dimensional way of operating. You have access to the terminal and your ide.

It’s beautiful

Do you have a minute to talk about my lord and savior VIM? Wanna see my dot files?

Don’t Speculate

Go to Twitch/YouTube. Watch a senior Vim/Jetbrains/Emacs/VS Code/Helix dev churn out code for a hackathon/advent-of-code, and see what you are (or are not!) missing out on.

If you have “how the hell did they just do that” moments, figure out what that feature is, and STEAL IT. If its too hard to steal, then maybe you are being limited by your editor. Base your “fear of missing out” on what you see rather than random people tossing their opinions around. Only you can answer “how much is that feature worth to me and my workflows?”

• If you’re going to try modal editors, sooner is exponentially better. Probably start with Vim bindings for VS Code.
• If you’re not going to go modal, then make absolutely sure you don’t bottom out. To be frank, Ctrl+D is the tip of the iceberg. Half the benefit of modal editors is, mastery is mandatory; they chase you around with a 10k volt taser until you’ve got 100 instinctual shortcuts. Hardly anyone mentions this but Go beyond/outside your editor: At the OS level, use spacebar as a modifier key, where holding spacebar converts your WASD into arrow keys. Then disable your normal arrow keys. Something like that will get you vim-like benefits, but in every app, and with a learning bump instead of a learning mountain. For VS Code, get cursor jumper extensions like Mario (block jumper), get cursor-alignment extensions, write boatloads of custom code snippets, get a macro record+replay extension, make a jump-to-next quote, jump to next bracket, install sequential number generator extension, a case change (camel case, snake case, etc) extension, sort lines, case-preserving rename. If you can avoid bottoming out, and keep learning, you’ll likely never feel that you are missing out on whatever modal editor people are swearing by.