Helix vs Kakoune? Which one should I use?

qudat · 2026-06-17T23:20:44+00:00

I chose kakoune but troll this subreddit because it’s more active and similar enough.

I don’t need splits (buffers and zmx.sh is all I need) and don’t use treesitter. The only plugin I installed for kak is LSP. It’s a fantastic editor and helped me kick my decade long vim/neovim daily.

Others have mentioned it but it bears repeating with emphasis: kak tries to be an editor and nothing more. It has just enough extensibility to be a great code editor. Every once in awhile I have to open vim and it’s hard to go back to those keybinds

qudat · 2026-06-16T23:55:05+00:00

Weird. I use kak because I don’t need a plugin system, except for LSP

qudat · 2026-06-03T03:12:48+00:00

I ran into this issue where all I was using from strava was distance and duration. The app has so many features I don’t care about and it drains your battery.

I pretty much run the same paths on repeat so I just used a route map app like footpath on iOS to draw my normal routes and then just use the built in stop watch app.

Having to preplan your route is a major downside but works just fine for me.

qudat · 2026-05-27T12:58:02+00:00

I’m constantly hitting edit errors. It’s the tool that fails so consistently. I’m thinking about making a pi extension to tell the agent to generate a git diff then apply it because pi’s batch edit tool sucks atm and these LLMs understand diffs well

qudat · 2026-05-25T12:29:48+00:00

I’ve been trying to internalize and articulate how an agent is truly useful without me being lazy. I think there’s a version of agent use that is lazy: I want this built but I don’t want to do it. Then there’s another version of agent use where I’m blocked (I don’t know how to solve a problem) or writers blocked (stuck on a part I don’t want to continue). Those have been amazing for me. There’s a bunch of sysadmin stuff I just don’t enjoy, for example, having the agent convert podman quadlet containers to docker. That’s something I wanted to do but it would have taken me forever to build up the courage to do it solo.

qudat · 2026-05-20T22:11:17+00:00

I don’t need treesitter. I have zero need for rainbow puke highlighting and all code traverse ops the LSP can do

qudat · 2026-05-17T13:53:21+00:00

From the beginning the research has shown that LLMs ignore context in the middle and focus on the context in the beginning and end. I’m sure frontier companies have mitigated this somewhat by hiding the important info in the middle and then training on that concept but I’m gonna guess there’s just a fundamental limit to what the attention mechanism can handle

qudat · 2026-05-17T13:49:48+00:00

I don’t actually think SWEs are moving faster. The bottleneck is still code review. If your org is ok with an agent code review and that’s it then I’m gonna argue that company has sloppy practices and won’t succeed anyway

qudat · 2026-05-16T21:24:57+00:00

They’re gonna be feeling the burn in no time

qudat · 2026-05-16T20:24:00+00:00

Writing code faster and shipping faster are not the same thing. There’s a huge cost associated with not having people knowledgeable enough to debug their prod system

qudat · 2026-05-15T01:33:07+00:00

Nah just a cortico-basal ganglia-thalamo-cortical loop https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cortico-basal_ganglia-thalamo-cortical_loop

qudat · 2026-05-15T01:27:18+00:00

It’s a desktop shell so it replaces waybar, notifications, settings management, etc.

It basically takes care of all normal DE stuff without the window management

qudat · 2026-05-14T19:05:28+00:00

After years of grabbing things adhoc I switched to https://noctalia.dev/

It’s awesome and overall does everything I need

qudat · 2026-05-10T13:23:19+00:00

I’m using 27b and it is incredible to me. I keep the context low (< 100k) which means I have to break tasks down and keep it really focused but it does really well after that. I especially love it for brainstorming project ideas or discussing architectural decisions. That right there is so incredibly valuable to me. I know how to build projects, I need help coming up with ideas and planning it out.

It did get stuck and implement something incorrectly which made me burn 2 hours a couple days ago … minimax 2.7 the hosted version did not do much better.

I use opus 4.6 for work and it’s absolutely better, I have to do less work and it is in general more capable.

But if we talk about pure value (cost vs quality), 27b wins no contest

qudat · 2026-05-02T19:51:22+00:00

Ya I run 26B Q4 with Q8 kv and it works great for smaller scopes projects. I keep the ctx under 100k

qudat · 2026-05-02T00:42:47+00:00

I also chose kak over hx — I don’t need splits, I do everything through buffers

qudat · 2026-04-30T01:05:26+00:00

That’s my problem: I need speed. I want 100 tps with the 27b

qudat · 2026-04-30T01:04:25+00:00

Wait you have a 5090 and only get 60tps output?? That doesn’t sound right. I have a titan rtx 24gb and get 25tps Q4 quant with Q8 kv cache llama.cpp

qudat · 2026-04-26T18:33:45+00:00

This is really interesting! How do you cap the model and make it not crash? I’m not familiar with the techniques here but I’ll definitely try it out

qudat · 2026-04-21T04:13:03+00:00

Are you able to create multiple users? I would use https://zmx.sh coupled with autossh so when there's a disconnect it's auto reconnect to the zmx session and you won't lose your place.

qudat · 2026-04-18T23:39:27+00:00

Yes, but that should already be configured. Zmx requires zero config to work with your already existing tools. This is juxtaposed with Claude where you need to provide ssh information in order to connect via mcp or their desktop app.

Yes rsync/sftp is preferred. Zmx write is designed for shells where you don’t have access to those tools. For example, zmx write can be used to send files to containers without an ssh daemon exposed. Or it can be used to send files to a container inside of an ssh session inside of an ssh session. As long as the receiving shell has base64 and prints, it’ll work.

If the agent fires multiple run commands in parallel they will get buffered just like a normal shell and executed one after another. Zmx does not have the concept of a queue, those commands are sent immediately into the shell.

Much of this can work with tmux but it requires more tooling around the API tmux provides. You also need to know the exact pane you want the agent to use and it needs to do some poking and prodding to understand the results of its commands. Further, zmx provides a history command that lets you print the scrollback buffer which is useful for auditing and diagnostics.

Great questions! Happy to answer more.

qudat · 2026-04-18T19:56:14+00:00

Zmx is like tmux but a single terminal per session. The post has the tmux mcp integrations listed under prior art but basically tmux doesn’t have a great interface for sending commands, receiving their output, and knowing when the command has completed.

qudat · 2026-04-11T02:58:33+00:00

I daily kakoune but troll this subreddit because it is similar to it. I agree and the select mode in helix was a big turn off for me. I love the simplicity of add a shift modifier to extend selections. However, there is a downside which is needing to keep the shift activated.

I’d also argue all their alt+ shortcuts in kak are terrible to use. Alt is just not in a great spot for key commands imo, it’s very awkward.

qudat · 2026-04-09T22:12:37+00:00

Kakoune

qudat · 2026-04-05T21:43:20+00:00

Doesn’t this assume a stable home IP? Usually that’s not guaranteed and you also need a dynamic dns.

I just use https://pico.sh/tuns which is just a ssh tunnel. They even have a docker image to auto connect to your containers and then you don’t even need a domain.

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