"Vim mode" in editors like Zed is great and all, but to me, Vim is much more than just a set of shortcuts. What I love about Vim is how seamlessly it integrates with the terminal and shell. I can pipe, redirect, and manipulate text with Bash, use any CLI tool, and move fluidly between my editor and my system. The terminal is insanely fast, works on any computer and OS, scriptable, and gives me access to everything I need.
Zed looks great, and I'm glad it has a Vim mode... but without that deep integration, it's missing what makes Vim truly powerful imo.
I believe that the use case you describe is a bit different than where you would use Zed primarily. If I have a code base with 100k lines of code, and I am developing that, I don't hop from terminal to editor and back by using the same terminal instance. I have different terminal window for that. Closing the editor window would lose too much context.
Zed has recently merged support for helix-like bindings, but it's still pretty far off (e.g. there's no way to default to "helix-normal" mode, meaning your first hotkey will be pure vim). I found it basically unusable for daily-driving, and Helix has me way too hooked on their style of modal editing for me to tolerate anything else.
I have been eyeing helix for quite a while. Been using (neo)vim for 22y. Why not Helix for the next 22!
I find the helix model of select then act so much more aligned to my mental model. Rather than verb then noun in vim.
Vim register handling on deletion is pure crap. (delete a line lands into a different register than delete a word, pasting over a selection overrides the default register etc.).
There is one plugin in vim that I cannot live without though, and that is easymotion (there are other similar plugins). It highlights objects with a letter (like the start of words for example), pressing the letter jumps to the object. I find this so much more natural and easier than jumping to line numbers. I might have to implement this into helix ;)
When Zed got released, I was looking forward to trying it out because I saw the potential.
Very soon I found out that: Vim mode must be perfect and few of my <leader> key combos have made me (Neo)vim addict. And also, I prefer terminal editor.
Not having the leader really annoys me but I’ve found myself using Zed more and more recently regardless. I think their LLM integration is just right for me unlike the neovim plugins I’ve tried. It’s really annoying because Ive been using vim for well over a decade so Id prefer to stick at home, but Zed is really reaching the level Im starting to like
They have a paid AI service. I think eventually the collaboration will be paid and it will probably rely on commercial licenses from companies and maybe offer more enterprise like features for that customer base
I’m not sure that they do, and that’s why I switched back to Vim from Zed. I can’t let myself build a skillset on a company’s product that’s liable to disappear in a few years.
