There's no project without some level of motivation. For me, it was realizing how slow and bloated both VSCode and Codium have become. I don't think I would've dived into the world of modal editing if VSC kept up with my workflow.

I remember the time when I first tried using an IDE: It was Visual Studio on a school computer. Even if it was slow and clunky I still loved it. Back then, there were no AI features or tons of distracting extension popups. I've used VSC/Codium ever since.

Over the years I have been using Codium, I switched to Nix and adopted a new keyboard-only workflow. I have fallen deep into the rabbit hole of productivity improvements. All while upstream VSC rapidly decreased editor performance and my own productivity with tons of AI crap. My philosophy began to differ from my editor, the program I spend most of my day in.

Just like how you can spend years finding the perfect Linux distro, I went looking for the perfect text editor.

I started with Vim. You should know that I had already tried using lazyvim (when I first switched to Nix) back but went back to the safety of Codium after just a few hours after realizing how intense the learning curve was (I wasn't ready yet)

About a month ago, I gave it second shot and spent hours ricing it to perfection. I thought it had everything I needed.

Nordvim: my first Vim rice

But I got lost in the config and spent more time configuring stuff than actually working. It's like everything has to be perfect. Being given infinite customization opportunities means an infinite amount of potential time making the perfect editor. I realized this a week or two in and dropped Nvim and went looking for something else.

After much research, I landed on Kak as my next editor. I used it for a few days, but faced a similar issue to Vim. The plugin ecosystem is big and it feels like there's almost infinite opportunity to improve the editor. Although not to the extent of Vim, it was enough for me to realize that the only meaningful difference to nvim was its updated keybinds (which I did prefer).

I experimented with Helix after Vim (but before Kakoune), yet it didn't stick. I was in between editors (kak, vsc, hx) and struggled to make Helix work. The lack of a sidebar file tree made it hard for me to be organized.

Becoming frustrated with all the editors in my workflow, I gave Helix one last chance and dropped both kak and vsc so I could try adapting to its highly opinionated workflow. I gave myself adequate time and really tried to make it work. I learned of its explorer view and its ability to embed shell commands into keybinds. I adopted a new workflow without a sidebar tree and now use aliases for file manipulation.

Helix's biggest advantage are the things it doesn't have. No plugin system and no extensive configuration. It has everything you need and nothing you don't.

While I understand the push for Helix's extension system, there is a good reason why Helix has existed so long (in high popularity) without one. It's because you don't need one. I learned this the hard way after Vim and Kakoune. The lack of a plugin ecosystem centralizes development efforts on the editor itself, improving the user experience for everyone rather than just a few people who spent too much time in a configuration file. And in my mind, this is the best way to manage a community and its project, especially when it's something as universal as a text editor.

Helix offers nothing fancy but in return you get a clean, focused modal workflow without the sunk time of configuring it to perfection.

Learning Helix's keybinds was easy. It's similar to Kakoune's and it just makes sense. Given that I hadn't spent too much time prior to actually learning Vim's keybinds, I didn't really have to relearn anything. Most of what I was familiar with existed in Helix and I just needed to add a few keybinds (like ctrl+c/v/s) from what I was used to from lazyvim and VSC.

In the days of agentic coding, it's easy to find coding as a 'task' that you have to hand off to an LLM to finish for you, and you need an IDE to clean up its mess. I've made a point of having separation between personal projects and AI. I see programming today as a hobby, as a way of enjoyment. Helix empowers recreational programmers. It offers no LLM autocompletion or code generation features (and no plugins to add it - you're forced into Claude's CLI) and nothing to distract you from the code. It's easier to find your flow and therefore it's easier to find enjoyment from writing code.

I grew out of VSC. And because of that, I'll forever be more productive and happier to write code.

When will you grow out of your Electron editor?