> I fully expect Helix to replace Vim, Neovim, and Kakoune for most users in the long run.
I hope this doesn't come off as flippant: I thought your comment was sarcastic at first.
While I love seeing newer / better software displacing the old and crusty, this seems a little unlikely, no? It seems like somewhat of a miracle that neovim has taken as much share as it has.
> It seems like somewhat of a miracle that neovim has taken as much share as it has.
It's not a miracle but rather a testament to how much Neovim improves upon Vim. The number of useful features, among them Tree-Sitter and LSP, that Neovim has introduced has ended what feels like decades of stagnation in Vim development.
Now imagine an editor like Neovim, but instead of working through 30 years of cruft and legacy code, it's built from the start using modern software engineering techniques and incorporates such features into its core editing model. That's essentially what Helix is. The Vim -> Neovim improvement is nothing compared to what Helix will deliver (and already is delivering in many aspects).
> Now imagine an editor like Neovim, but instead of working through 30 years of cruft and legacy code, it's built from the start using modern software engineering techniques and incorporates such features into its core editing model.
User inertia is strong. Neovim has its success because of its improvement, but more importantly, the keymap and config language is based on Vim7. Vim7 users can painlessly switch to Neovim with all config preserved. That's the main reason why Neovim can gain a large number of users initially. Conversely, Helix has no keymap nor configuration compatibility with Vim or other mainstream editors. Given this, I see no hope that Helix will become mainstream.
Based on my observation of colleagues' dominant usage of IntelliJ-originated editors, I think that modal-editors users are far enough from the mainstream that some rules dont apply: Heliy may end up dominant in our pocket-universe, based on merit alone.
IMO it is not that surprising that neovim has had some success, in the same way that it isn't very surprising that SwayWM has had some success. They both have the benefit of, in many cases, being completely compatible with the tool they want to replace. Being almost completely compatible with the old tool, while integrating a popular new technology (LSP or wayland) seems to be the only way to win over users who already have a strong connection to their tools of choice.
My vimrc already has a bunch of configuration in it, I'll give Helix a try when it is able to parse that (so, probably never, I guess).
I hope this doesn't come off as flippant: I thought your comment was sarcastic at first.
While I love seeing newer / better software displacing the old and crusty, this seems a little unlikely, no? It seems like somewhat of a miracle that neovim has taken as much share as it has.
P.s. I'm hoping to eat my words one day.