Helix does not aim to be a better vim / neovim. Thus, for example, there are officially no vim bindings and Helix follows the selection → action model. Helix is also a relatively new project.
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Been using it on all my machines for many months now. Replaced all my basic usage that I had of vim/neovim and all the attempted and failed customisations and plugins I had tried to install. It works very well for console editing any file I need to reach without being overwhelming with weird short cuts I’ll never be able to learn and with nice enough UI/UX that guides and teaches. Even better the integration with lsp allows to launch some project files and have the basics like go to definition kinda work.
Tried to learn vim for many years without being succefull in doing much more than just moving around and inserting/deleting text with the most basic commands.
It’s great for anyone that doesn’t want to go the vim route but still get a powerful editor to learn.
While I totally understand the struggle of learning Vim, I would still recommend it over Helix for the fact that most popular IDE support “vim mode” or “vim plugin”, making vim not only a text editor but also a popular workflow across development environments. I would totally try out Helix if the key memory isn’t only restricted to the Helix program
I recently gave it a try after seeing dessalines recommending it. It is pretty cool but years of vim muscle memory won’t go away so easily :D
In my opinion, users who already use vim are not the primary target audience of Helix. I see the target group more among users who want to switch from a “normal” editor to a modal editor. The selection → action model and the easier shortcuts probably make the switch easier for many. I personally don’t like vim at all because of the handling (purely subjective view). Helix will definitely not be my default editor but I get along much better with it than with vim or neovim.
When I first tried Helix, my main concern (that prevented me from getting too far into it) was not going from Vim to Helix, but the other way around. Vim (or sometimes vi) is a standard editor on almost any Linux machine, so if I am ever working on a server if a VM, I would need to know/use Vim keybinds. That made Vim a more useful tool for me to learn at the time, as I could use the skills both on my machine and anywhere else.
I don’t feel like this is true anymore. Many distros do not ship vi(m) anymore but only nano.
