I already talked about the Helix editor. I try to use it on a daily basis from time to time. It works perfectly on virtual consoles in Ubuntu or via ssh if you don’t need an X server. I now have some consequent muscle memory anchored in my Neovim key bindings, and I often make some mistake when working with Helix. I believe I don’t use it often enough to really enjoy its capabilities and the editing model underlying this Kakoune/Vim hydra. I know there are some support for Vim keymapping, but I try to work with builtins.

What I really like:

• It works out of the box. Just install the binary (from a tarball or Flathub), any additional LSP stuff you need (e.g., lldb-vscode, pyright, black), and check that it has been detected with hx --health. Then you’re probably good to go. There’s barely anything to configure (unless you use pyright LSP for Python).
• There are a few fuzzy pickers builtin, and they are great: LSP finder and gotos, file picker, etc. Everything comes with a popup menu “à la which-key” which helps finding the right binding in case you forgot it. Otherwise, the popup menu is rather unintrusive if you are quick enough for any two key mapping.
• Since it is a single app with everything bundled, it will work across different machines the same way. Even with no configuration (see above), you’ll get a very capable text editor.
• Git support is acceptable, at least there’s a Git gutter and goto next/prev change. Bonus, you get a visual selection for free in the later cases.
• Tree sitter support is excellent, and unlike Neovim you don’t need to install extra plugins (which don’t exist anyway, at the time of this writing).
• Native DAP support is nice, especially when you see how picky it is to configure everything in Neovim with nvim-dap (the plugin is great, it’s just that it is a lot of extra configuration for lldb-vscode, debugpy, etc.). I’m eagerly awaiting full support for Python.
• So many good defaults, e.g., start in a directory with hx . and you get a file picker.
• I don’t use builtin colorschemes but they look gorgeous as advertised. Here is my boring colorless theme, by the way:

What I miss:

• No built-in terminal. I use it a lot, be it for simply launching a program alongside or for running REPL or test suites.
• Muscle memory, as I said. I wish there were a better way to add support for, e.g., $, 0 or _. Switching from Neovim to Helix too often means wandering through the vagaries of keyboard shortcuts to navigate text.
• cw and yiw. Argh, you need to make a selection first. Muscle memory again…
• Filetype-based text soft/hard wraping, reflowing, and things like that, although I am aware of the hard-wraping (:reflow) capabilities. I would really like soft-wraping and I miss Vim’s gqip for hard-wraping.
• I miss Vim’s visual blocks which I find especially useful to add comment at the start of several lines or remove extra whitespace, etc. I know we can do the same with multiple selections, but it’s, well, different.
• No spell checke, but this may change soon.
• I still need to find my way through the use of pipes instead of Vim’s r! although it is a minor issue.