I've been a happy vimmer for 15 years. I've been dabbling in helix for a month and liking it a lot. The ast-aware selection capabilities--while not habit yet--feel like a fledgling superpower.
Seems similar. I haven't used the text objects stuff enough to be sure--I'm just excited to do so.
There's something to be said for having it baked in though. I've been nix-ifying my configs and not having to think about any plugins was a welcome change.
(Unless you count language servers as plugins, which you maybe should.)