Dimitri Sabadie
phaazon.net · Personal blog · on HN since 2018
Dimitri Sabadie is a Rust and graphics programmer writing about text editors like Kakoune and Helix, Rust, and Zig.
What HN saysCommenters cite his editor posts as a thoughtful comparison of Vim, Helix, and Kakoune, and he is described as a prominent Kakoune contributor.
15HN people shared it
3linked it in comments
18stories submitted
227story points
1 year agolast shared
2018people per year2026
Most-shared posts
- 1Even more hindsight on Vim, Helix and Kakoune3 people · 3 points · first shared 2023 · 1 comments on HN
- 2My thoughts about editors in 20202 people · 49 points · first shared 2020 · 68 comments on HN
- 3The Philosophy of Kakoune Editor2 people · 23 points · first shared 2023 · 3 comments on HN
- 4My thoughts about editors in (early) 20212 people · 7 points · first shared 2021 · 2 comments on HN
- 5On impl blocks, injection and surjection in Rust2 people · 5 points · first shared 2018 · discussion on HN
- 6My Thoughts about Editors in 20222 people · 1 points · first shared 2023 · discussion on HN
- 7Development Environments1 people · 124 points · first shared 2022 · 142 comments on HN
- 8Zig; what I think after months of using it1 people · 5 points · first shared 2025 · discussion on HN
- 9On dealing with owning and borrowing in public interfaces in Rust1 people · 4 points · first shared 2018 · discussion on HN
- 10Development Environments1 people · 2 points · first shared 2022 · discussion on HN
- 11Let’s talk about C++ constructors1 people · 2 points · first shared 2020 · discussion on HN
- 12My thoughts about editors (2021)1 people · 1 points · first shared 2022 · discussion on HN
- 13Reflections about Note-Taking1 people · 1 points · first shared 2024 · discussion on HN
What HN people wrote when they linked it
cosmojg · 2023-06-22
A prominent Kakoune contributor wrote up a great blog post exploring that question here: https://phaazon.net/blog/more-hindsight-vim-helix-kakoune
wartijn_ · 2023-06-22
The author did mention emacs in the previous article where he talked about editors.
> The reason I didn’t stick around Emacs was basically because of its runtime choice, and ultimately, its Lisp ecosystem. The Emacs community is one of the best I have been talking to, and they have really, really talented people working on insanely complex topics, like turning Elisp code into native code (via C), including Emacs itself. But even with all those optimizations, the editor was still feeling too slow, and has a lot of background that you can feel. All the abstraction layers, all the Lisp macros (oh no), etc.
https://phaazon.net/blog/editors-in-2022
celrod · 2025-10-10
I use kakoune, and don't understand why helix seems to be taking off while kakoune (which predated and inspired helix) remains niche.
Kakoune fully embraces the unix philosophy, even going so far as relying on OS (or terminal-multiplexer, e.g. kitty or tmux) for window management (via client/sever, so each kakoune instance can still share state like open buffers).
A comparison going into the differences (and embracing of the unix philosophy by kakoune) by someone who uses both kakoune and helix: https://phaazon.net/blog/more-hindsight-vim-helix-kakoune
Sensible defaults and easy setup are a big deal. No one wants to fiddle with setting up their lsp and tree-sitter. There's probably more to their differences in popularity than just this, though.