I did this in February after 20 years in Vim. Haven't opened vim since. Happy coding my friend :)

I got you. Put this in your ~/.config/helix/config.toml.

    theme = "bogster"

Or type `:theme` and use tab to cycle through the themes (it'll apply the theme to the current file while you cycle, no need to hit enter).

Thanks. One theme (autumn_night) has a black background.

Next up: keys suck. I often use dw or d/something and these fail. Any quick way to resolve?

No. And I hope there never will be. It's a different editor with its own ideas about how modal editing should be done.

It does not sound like that has your interest. That's fine. Stick with vim.

I've used Helix since February, and vim for 20 years prior.

For basic edits it's roughly on par now for me (maybe a bit slower?); but then Helix has really neat tree-sitter integration, so as I'm getting more and more used to that, I find myself jumping around code faster and with more precision.

I also never have these moments of fat-fingering a key and then have vim go nuts on me. Like I suddenly deleted half the function and ended up in some mode I've never heard of while doing a recursive recording. ... just mentioning that because I believe (but not sure) that it's because of this selection > verb scheme that I don't ever see that happening in Helix :)

Don't even try to reconfigure them. Try to learn the editor first as it is.

If you think that's crazy-talk, then imagine someone saying they'd like to learn vim, but they find it hard to configure the shortcuts to be like Eclipse. They aren't wrong, but it also doesn't seem like the right approach to learn vim either.

After 20 years of vim I decided to try out Helix back in Feb and never looked back, so I guess I can chime in here.

Sure, it took a few days (maybe weeks?) of feeling uncomfortable, but unlike vim, Helix is very approachable. I think you have to be okay with a certain level of feeling uncomfortable if you want to do or learn anything new though. If learning a new editor isn't your thing, then don't. :)

I get this same question a lot when people realize that I use Dvorak layout. Sure, yes, it took time to learn. But I was curious if there was something better for me on the other side. It seemed plausible that there would be, so I gave it a shot. In both cases I have been happy with my investment.

Slightly off-topic: how do you manage using an alternative layout with an editor like vim/Helix? I've been trying to figure out how/if to remap the keys in the editor condig.

If you remap hjkl to your right-hand home row, that could cause a cascade of other remappings. If you don't, you lose basic navigation with hjkl.

I use Dvorak, although I regret the choice to learn it instead of Qwerty. If you don’t remap, and I don’t, then you need to use two hands instead of one to navigate. Not a dealbreaker for me though, since by coincidence the places hjkl ended up on Dvorak that makes navigating with them tolerable.

Instead of qwerty?? Never even considered that a possibility.

I also don't remap anything. It's fiiine. You'll get used to it :-)

I opened helix to check it for you. Pressed `g` and had a little popup tell me that following with `h` = line start, `l` = line end, `s` first non-blank in line (plus ~15 other options).

My hx doesn't wrap lines, so didn't check `gj` and `gk`.

If you don't wrap lines how do you write text?

Good question, and I don't think my answer will satisfy your needs, but it does mine.

The only long form text that I ever write is in markdown. I do miss the `gq` command from vim, but in general I just do a single line break after every dot. Markdown ignores a single line break in the middle of a paragraph, so it works out okay. I even found it almost convenient to edit text like that because it's easy to move lines around.

In code documentation (which I do a lot of), I have to manually wrap the lines of course (just like anyone else). That's where I miss `gq` the most. :)

I live (and bike) here too. I think what you mean to say is that it can feel kind of hectic and dangerous to step out of a bus onto the bike lane.

I can promise you that every biker care. If nothing else, then at least for their own safety. And in the 35 years I've been biking around here, I've never seen a collision between someone stepping out of a bus and a bike coming from behind.

In every company I have worked in on the frontend, this is the answer.

"We need to increase x" comes down from somewhere, and then everyone attempts to find a good way to measure increase/decrease of x and then come up with a design that increases x.

I have never been in a company where a UX or UI designer had leverage to redesign anything just for the hell of it.

This made me think of how many developers (who spend 10 hrs/day in front of their screen) choose Apples products. A linux machine might be better on performance, maintainance, and all that, but Linux does not care about UX the way Apple does.

The only reason most devs I work with don't use a Linux laptop is that our corporate security, vpn, and auditing software isn't available for Linux. We settle for garbage-tier UX from docker + x11.app so we can do our jobs, not because Apple cares about anything.

What about all the developers (who spend 10 hrs/day in front of their screen) that choose unix machines?

The ux for the things I _actually do_ is way better on a linux machine.

Are any of the unixes[1], other than macOS, commonly used as the system powering the screen?

[1] https://www.opengroup.org/openbrand/register/

You're not going to convince someone in the cult of Apple that their overpriced machine isn't worth the premium.

An actual VT4xx or VT5xx is the best terminal. An xterm window is a decent substitute (and if it comes with the optional Tek emulator, has some small extra whistles, but I think that has mostly been ripped out of all xterms by now).

The MacOS terminal is... so-so. I mean, it's not horrible, but it is also not great.

I am not convinced that Apple kit has the best UX (and I am in the same room as two macs that I alternate between).

I run i3/tmux/xterm wherever I can (also back when I was doing frontend). I definitely prefer this over anything Apple has been able to offer me in terms of user experience.

My comment above was just a reflection of a connection I hadn't made before. :)

I somewhere between like and REALLY like the laptops. Still not convinced by the touch bar on the work 16" MacBook Pro. But, it does seem kind of neat in many ways. At some point, I may experiment with its tex suggestions, for surrealism, if nothing else.

Lots of devs can't choose their platform. It's often a choice between Windows and Mac, if that. On a lot of the jobs I've worked, it was Windows-only. Give me a Linux machine instead and I will spend the day as happy as a genie who was permanently released from its bottle.

I actually don't know any engineers that use apple. A lot of graphic artists and designers for sure.

Really? We're both Android users ourselves, and use a mix of Chrome and FF.

Did you perhaps not really add the feed? Like, it shows you a preview where you only see the titles first, and then you have to click "Add feed" at the top. It's just a step for you to be sure that you got what you want; but I guess it isn't 100% clear.