I loved Vim; the keybindings, simplicity, and modal style usage. I could use plugins to achieve almost anything, enabling smooth workflows and tooling that others have pioneered.

However, as someone who jumps between frameworks, languages and projects, many past chosen plugins become redundant and forgotten. The last thing anyone needs is technical debt from their IDE, and so I entered a period of using JetBrains IDEs a couple of years ago when my role required me to focus on React.

Recently, I stumbled upon Helix IDE at the same time as Nix Flakes, and that spurred the realisation of this powerful but simple setup.

First, make it more like Vim

My frst step for any IDE setup is to make it more like Vim using whichever extension/plugin they have to offer :)

(you can even do this with browser text fields via wasavi)

So, for VSCode I used the main vim plugin,

and then added the following keybindings.json and settings.json which are found at ~/.config/Code/User/ …

The Quest Continues

In 2012, I started blogging about Vim As My Ide. At that time, I was also going to try and focus on Scala as it was all the rage. However, I didn’t like using clunky IDEs like Eclipse to develop in the Java world, and I didn’t have any pressing reason to continue. Today, I’m back on board the Scala train for work purposes and will leverage some of the newfound support for Scala that Vim has.