I just can't see if ever taking off, if I'm honest. The people that use neo/vim are going to continue using it, even if Helix is better. The people who aren't yet using it will use vs-code and the few that do switch, well they might go to Helix but there's a lot of vim resources out there, so I'm not sure all of them will go to Helix.
Honestly, language servers are a bit of a faff to set up, but that's tooling and it's getting easier and easier to get these installed now. I expect that will continue.
I've tried to make the switch to Neovim from Vscodium before but there was so much configuration for all the language stuff (and I'm not the biggest fan of Lua). But after seeing this post and installing Helix it's been pretty painless so far and I think this can actually help me make the switch. I am about to try some configuration for Rust debugging but that shouldn't be needed once they've got full DAP support. I use Neovim as my standard text editor so the navigation and bindings aren't a problem, lets see if Helix can make my IDE be in the terminal too.
For the longest time I was using YouCompleteMe with vim and then tried all sorts of LSP servers. And while I'm still using them, I feel like that YouCompleteMe solution back in the day had a lot less fiddling involved. Sure they have more features and more selection and variety nowadays, but I have spent so much more time configuring things that I kinda regret it now.
> I just can't see if ever taking off, if I'm honest. The people that use neo/vim are going to continue using it, even if Helix is better.
I would think that helix probably is better because I'm certain that the verb->text object paradigm in vim could be much better. It may in fact make more sense to do the 'text object' first like it seems to do in both helix and kakoune. But is it better enough for me to switch off something that I've used for years now? Only if it sees mass adoption and you see many developers adopting it. Like if you see it in VS Code as an option to use helix bindings, then it is probably safe to consider adopting it.
> Honestly, language servers are a bit of a faff to set up, but that's tooling and it's getting easier and easier to get these installed now. I expect that will continue.
I've been pleasantly surprised with how much better LSP setup in neovim has gotten, as I've transitioned over to the native LSP from CoC, which is also excellent. It's still not pain-free to setup, but it's much easier than it was and I suspect you're right that it'll continue to get easier... though I doubt it'll get anywhere close to how easy VS Code is to use any time soon.
While I was going through the effort to set up DAP support, I discovered [mason.nvim](https://github.com/williamboman/mason.nvim) which has been a game-changer for LSP, DAP, and linter setups.
There had previously been fragmented plugins (williamboman/nvim-lsp-installer was Mason's predecessor and is a good example) that solved the problem of installation and management for each of these. With Mason, I feel that the story for managing different language environments has jumped to be extremely close to VSCode's extensions.
> The people that use neo/vim are going to continue using it, even if Helix is better. The people who aren't yet using it will use vs-code and the few that do switch
I'm not so sure. I have been using vim for years and I still do, but in the last few years the majority of my use has been vscode with the vim plugin. I have seen the same pattern in many others.
Helix is right up my alley and I'm definitely playing with it. It's not a straight vim replacement for many reasons and it's also not yet a vscode replacement for me, but I'm very excited about it and I can absolutely see it replacing my use of vim sooner or later.
Honestly, language servers are a bit of a faff to set up, but that's tooling and it's getting easier and easier to get these installed now. I expect that will continue.