Computer terminal forever

Sun, 16 Aug 2026 21:52:02 +0200

It is interesting to see that after years of finding new ways to interface with computers, professionals always end up on the terminal. Why the terminal of all things?

If you have made the experience of using the computer with a keyboard only, you see that your brain wires the thought of a command and the typing reflex to execute this command almost perfectly. At some point you start typing commands automatically.

Full-text search in Helix

Sun, 16 Aug 2026 21:22:02 +0200

I taught myself vim many years ago. If I remember correctly I played a game that teaches you the keymap like h,j,k,l for navigation. Then I installed a ton of plugins that turned vim into an IDE and for the same reason never used it again. Instead of managing plugins and syncing buffers I ended up using Helix.

The most important feature to me is “full-text search”. I need to comb through directories with thousands of files and search with various patterns. Modern IDEs support this out-of-the-box. But with vim I had to do some kind of fzf integration and install plugins. And this is probably the reason I am stuck with Helix. No plugins required and a powerful search right away. Here is what it looks like:

In Helix you press space+/ and the search dialog opens. Helix calls these dialogs pickers. You can then enter you search pattern (in fzf syntax) and/or use filters like %p path to further refine the search results. With tab you cycle through the results and hit enter to open the file.

Emacs on Janik von Rotz

Computer terminal forever

Full-text search in Helix