• yetAnotherUser@lemmy.ca
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    2 months ago

    Emacs and (Neo)Vim are a bit too overwhelming for me. I’ve tried Neovim for a relatively long time, but I felt kind of overloaded with the vast amount of features and plugins it has. I’ve tried Emacs a bit, but its complexity always scared me (not to mention it uses its own version of Lisp, a language that is notorious for its ability of creating new language features on the fly, hence even more complexity). I’ve been using Helix, and I couldn’t be happier. I’ve realized that I don’t really care much about editor customization, and that what I was looking for was just a cool modal editor with some useful features (such as file picker, LSP, tree-sitter, multiple cursors, …). The keybinds are also easier to grasp, as fewer of them feel arbitrary compared to Vim. In Vim and Emacs, it feels like you can do everything, while in Helix, it feels more like you can do everything the developers think that might be useful for you. Who knows, maybe I’ll try again Emacs and (Neo)Vim again in the far future, but I don’t feel like it for now.

    • BartyDeCanter@lemmy.sdf.org
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      2 months ago

      May I recommend Helix? It’s a modal editor like vim, but has a better out of the box experience, better discoverability for commands, and uses an easier to understand select->command syntax.

      • WhosMansIsThis@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        Just started using helix a few months ago and I’m in love. The movement took a second to get used to but its super efficient once you get the hang of it. I highly recommend it, especially if you’re doing any kind of programming or sysadmin work and you hate gui ides.

    • da_cow (she/her)@feddit.orgOP
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      2 months ago

      All time classic.

      Im not going crazy just playing around a bit, remapping some keybindings and so on. It is in fact kind of fun.

      (I actually just tried jumping to the first line of my comment while writing it using C-e, which is the default keybind for this in emacs. I think its getting worse. Aaaaaaaaghhhhhhhhhh)

      • pet the cat, walk the dog@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        Look into Doom Emacs. It’s pretty cool in general, but especially if one is inclined towards Vim’s keybindings (which I recommend learning) and uses Org-mode.

        tried jumping to the first line of my comment using C-a

        That would work in MacOS (iirc), since most of app shortcuts there are on the cmd keys, and some Emacs/readline bindings work in text fields. Though C-a moves to the first character of the current line, not first line.

      • promitheas@programming.dev
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        2 months ago

        Im a neovim user myself, and i swapped my caps and escape keys at the os level. I touch another computer and am WONDERING WHY IM WRITING LIKE THIS xD

        • addie@feddit.uk
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          2 months ago

          As a “caps lock is another control” enjoyer, I know that pain. Don’t need to take your fingers off the home keys to type ^[ , whereas the proper escape key is a bit of a stretch.

  • Kristell@herbicide.fallcounty.omg.lol
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    2 months ago

    Honestly, I don’t even code much, and I didn’t at all when I downloaded emacs, but it’s so damn useful that it stays open any time my PC is on. Only time I close it is to make sure that my files stay synced when I leave my laptop on, and do something on my desktop.

  • woelkchen@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    As a text editor (which is different from an IDE, obviously) just use KWrite or GEDIT (or whatever Gnome uses these days).

    • da_cow (she/her)@feddit.orgOP
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      2 months ago

      If i just want to edit a single file I usually just use nano since it gets used right in the command line and doesnt open a seperate window, but if I want to edit multiple files emacs is very nice, since I dont have to take my hands of the keyboard.

    • clif@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      I decided to give it an honest try after somebody mentioned it on lemmy a few weeks ago.

      … I really like it.

      I still pop open Theia if I’m just doing some research that has me hopping all around, or sometimes on a separate monitor for a referenced project/library associated with my work, but I do the actual work in Helix.

  • Wofls@feddit.org
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    2 months ago

    Save yourself the trouble and just skip ahead: real programmers use butterflies

  • cally [he/they]@pawb.social
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    2 months ago

    I used to use Neovim until I got tired of it and switched to Helix. I tried Emacs for a bit but turns out that Helix does everything I need it to do without any extra configuration.

    And of course I use caps:swapescape because I am not reaching all the way to the Escape key all the time.

    • lilith267@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      2 months ago

      This is also my goal! …since 2020.

      I love vim/nvim but I’ve gotten used to using VIM more as a text editor then an IDE. Writing a script? Taking notes? Maybe even a small program? VIM all the way. Working on a big project that needs an LSP? Either spend the next 20 hours fucking with your VIM config and 20 plugins to get basic functionality… Or just open VSCode and install one plugin

      Heres to hoping since NVIM 0.11 with their LSP overhaul I can finnally make the full switch