Setting up my development evironment 🛠

The further along I get in my career the less time I want to spend configuring tools and the more time I want to spend solving problems.

Obviously this is a delicate balance in the sense that I want to be using the best tools for the job that require the least configuration.

For the past few years I have been perfectly content using VS Code, but I would be lying if I said there was not a part of me that wanted to dust of my old Vim config and jump back into the world of modal editors.

However everytime I thought about jumping back into Vim (or more accurately Neovim) I was so put off by the fact that I knew I'd need to spend days brining by configuration up to date I would give up before I had even started.

That's when I found Helix, a modal editor that ships an experience that allows me to be productive immediately.

Helix has a lot in common with Vim but is also different enough that it will require un-learning some Vim patterns/behaviours. Most notably Helix is Kakoune inspired.

Kakoune was just starting to gain traction when I switched my workflow over to VS Code and while I found myself agreeing with most of their ideas I just didn't have it in me to switch editors again at that time.

Helix takes a lot of those ideas and combines them with the intention of providing a good out of the box editing experience and the end result is truly spectacular.