I envy that with emacs you feel you only need 2 plugins. That probably operates with a ton more stability.

https://codeberg.org/dannyfritz/dotfiles/src/commit/b647b440...

It’s only a matter of time before someone deploys something malicious to one of those 50 plugins.

Language support in JetBrains IDEs is top-notch, but they consume a lot of resources and do not work well for remote development in my experience. I still open them from time to time to do complex refactoring. Also, I just hate the idea of opening Goland, RustRover, and PyCharm at the same time. I have a monorepo at work with multiple languages.

Part of it for me is that I really don't like the massive plugin / config wall that is the modern neovim/spacemacs experience. I truly appreciate the extensibility and the fact that those plugins allow for things helix just can't do right now (e.g. emacs is effectively the IDE for any lisp language and you can't load up a repl in helix). But the problem with that becomes not only do I need to learn the application itself, but now I need to learn a whole bunch of plugins, and often learn about the differences between them because everyone has their own preferences in combinations, so looking up how to do something covered by a plugin often leads you to multiple incompatible answers. And even if you bite the bullet on trying to build your own config from scratch (which I did with emacs) you're still often just taking on faith other people's recommendations on stuff, or spending a lot of time learning about a plugin to make a decision and that time is time you're not spending on whatever you want to be doing.

Helix benefits from being new and not carrying generations of legacy decisions behind it. As a result, helix can make decisions and defaults that fit "modern" expectations. It's not perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but it's also probably what I would recommend for someone "new to the TUI" as a place to start when you just need something with a good chunk of modern conveniences and don't want to spend the next few weeks getting the editor configured.

I used neovim for 20 years and still like it a lot. But after some plugins broke I wanted to give helix a try. I am missing a plugin system in helix.

However, for me, helix comes with the nearly perfect amount of functionality, while being extremely responsive. It also made me appreciate stuff like multicursor, which I haven’t tried before.

I tried multiple out of the box nvim solutions, but never liked one of those.

I looked into zed, but don’t see much of a reason to use it. Maybe I should give it a try.

I also know enough rust to try to help fix bugs but don't know any C family languages; I have a strong preference to use open-source projects written in languages I know.

Neovim exist to improve upon concepts in Vim (easier plugin development with Lua).

Helix exists to improve upon concepts in Neovim (need for less plugins, more out of box functionality).

Helix is more similar to Neovim than Emacs and Helix is newer and less popular than Neovim, so people are predictably curious on why they should choose Helix over Neovim.