Comment by chongli

I can’t speak for helix because I haven’t tried it, but I did spend a few weeks trying to get used to Kakoune before giving up and going back to vim.

The issue is that moving around would leave behind a trail of breadcrumbs. Sometimes these were visible cursors but other times they were invisible. Either way, I found myself being frequently surprised by the editor when it made changes I was not expecting.

Perhaps it’s something I could get used to with more time but it left me constantly perplexed and annoyed. I think ultimately what gets me is that in vim I can type a motion key and vim executes the motion and then returns to to a “null state” whereas with motion-action editors any time I key in a motion to jump somewhere I am now in the middle of the “motion-action” sequence and the editor is awaiting an action key to which it will eagerly respond. This to me feels very wrong, similar to the feeling I get when Siri is continuing to listen for more commands after invoking the command I asked for. Having to dismiss Siri all the time annoys the hell out of me.

Kakoune has a similar “dismiss key” which I remember pressing all the time out of habit, even when it was unnecessary, because the editor left me with this constant feeling of “unstable footing.”