this post was submitted on 09 Feb 2025
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Programming

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Coders or lemmy, what editors do you use? Is it worth learning a new one? (programming.dev)
submitted 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) by verstra@programming.dev to c/programming@programming.dev
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When I was in high school I found Sublime Text and learned "multiple cursors". Since then, I've transitioned to vscode, mainly because I need LSP (without too much configuration work) for my work.

I keep hearing about how modal editing is faster and I would like to switch to a more performant editor. I've been looking at helix, as the 4th generation of the vi line of editors. Is anyone using it? Is it any good for the main code editor?

The problem that I have is that learning new editing keybindings would probably take me a month of time, before I get to the same amount of productivity (if I ever get here at all). So I'm looking for advice of people who have already done that before.

My code editing does involve a lot of "ctrl-arrow" to move around words, "ctrl-shift-arrow" to select words, "home/end" to move to beginning/end of the line, "ctrl-d" for "new cursor at next occurrence", "shift-alt-down" for "new cursor in the line below", "ctrl-shift-f" for "format file" and a few more to move around using LSP-provided "declaration"/"usages".

I would have to unlearn all of that.

Also, I do use "ctrl-arrow" to edit this post. Have you changed keybindings in firefox too?

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[โ€“] uthredii@programming.dev 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Ahhh nice, I have thought about trying out Kakoune as it supports plugins. Do you use many plugins/find them useful?

Helix does have a pipe command also.

[โ€“] Dark_Arc@social.packetloss.gg 2 points 23 hours ago

I've mostly just tweaked the configuration and built my own comment formatter/reflow command based on the comment style at work.

It's almost more about what it doesn't have for me, because what I've run into a lot with trying newer editors is they try and manage the code too much and the code base at work has its own style guide that doesn't match what the editor tries to do. So the editor might make me slightly more productive ... until I find myself fighting with it every 3 lines because of auto formatting or some language server quirk.