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by heldrida 513 days ago
I used to believe that a File explorer is crucial in my text editor; after using Helix for more than a year, I’ve discovered that is not required at all; space+f much faster use flow. I work with split terminal windows, where I have supporting windows to navigate the file system.

Happy to try a file explorer once again, it’ll be interesting to see how I feel a year later.

2 comments

I ditched file explorer in neovim and just use fzf.

I also ditched tabs and rely on fzf on the buffers.

It’s a really powerful setup and cleans up the UI significantly

> I’ve discovered that is not required at all; space+f much faster use flow.

Some use "fuzzy find" on the filename, which is ultra fast too.

I use something even faster IMO: typically I know at least some of the text of the source / test code file I want to go to. So I either use a function of the editor that can "find usage" or... I simply use ripgrep, integrated in my editor, and start typing text I know is in the file I want to visit.

I still use, sometimes, a "file explorer" to find the file to open but it's not the most common.

In a way using a file explorer is "sort": things are arranged in folders/directories. Fuzzy search or finding usages or ripgrep is "search". So, basically:

"search, don't sort"

A file explore is great only for browsing (to get a sense of the project) and managing files (moving renaming, especially in batch). Actually opening file is better with a finder (either filename or content) and a fuzzy filter. I use emacs and consult is a great package for that (the native features mostly present a buffer with the result). A step up from VSC is acting over a result buffer and have the changes reflected back to the normal buffer. Like renaming functions when LSP can’t help you.
You're shadowbanned, mate, almost all your comments from at least the last couple of weeks are dead.
Probably not the best venue, but if you read through the comments, kind of makes sense.

"Assume good faith", "Converse curiously" and "Eschew flamebait" are part of the guidelines for commenting, for good reasons.

I don't think they're shadowbanned, just a lot of the comments have been banned the old-fashioned way.
I’m not seeing it? They don’t appear to be shadowbanned from my account.
Lots of completely harmless comments are dead, the few that are not were vouched for by someone (like myself if we're talking about this thread specifically). I don't really care either way, but the guy should be aware that he's writing into /dev/null
dang seems to have outright banned him just over a fortnight ago. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42653007

On Hacker News, banned accounts can still comment, but those comments are immediately dead until vouched.

Isn't space+f fuzzy find?
For me, space+f is a "fuzzy search", a filter to find by filename. You can omit some characters, e.g. `pack/back/conf` would show `packages/backend/config.z`.

I have muscle memory now, so I'd have to open the editor to confirm it. There is also another mode, that works a bit like grep I think? I haven't used it but seems that you can look for matches in file content.