[usef-]

Almost all the size is language grammars, which are optional and removable. Some distros like Alpine make them separate packages.

But for desktop use, I think it's a good default to have everything "just work" out-of-the-box, because 110mb is nothing for typical developer machines.

[xigoi]

Have you considered that professional developers who can afford expensive computers are not the only ones using a text editor?

[usef-]

Absolutely, I used one for many years before I was professional.

Out of curiosity, what hardware are you picturing those people running it on?

I've run Helix on a Daylight computer, which has a deliberately underpowered CPU (MediaTek Helio G99) and it's incredibly fast/snappy. 110mb is still near-trivial on the 128GB storage.

If you're (validly) worried about bloated software, note that Alpine's helix package is 10.3MB, which is smaller than their Neovim or Emacs packages. Individual language files are small (python is ~500kb uncompressed), there are just hundreds of supported languages. But installed ones are not loaded unless you edit the language.