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Writing my own text editor, and daily-driving it

A developer, frustrated with the limitations and 'fingerspitzengefühl' of existing text editors, spent two years building and daily-driving his own, meticulously documenting the technical challenges and solutions along the way. This deep dive into custom tool creation resonates with the HN audience's appreciation for technical mastery and tailored productivity. The author illustrates how such a personal project can lead to profound learning and renewed passion for programming.

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#8
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8h
on Front Page
First Seen
Mar 11, 3:00 AM
Last Seen
Mar 11, 10:00 AM
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The Lowdown

This post chronicles the journey of a programmer who, dissatisfied with prevalent text editors like Howl, Helix, and VS Code, decided to build his own. He details the motivations, challenges, and technical solutions encountered while developing a bespoke terminal-based text editor tailored to his specific workflow and preferences.

  • Motivation for a Custom Editor: The author's previous editor, Howl, suffered from dead development, poor project-wide search, GUI-only limitations, and a lack of an integrated terminal. Despite trying numerous alternatives, none offered the ideal "fingerspitzengefühl" he sought.
  • Development Philosophy: He started with a small scope, initially avoiding complex features like full Unicode support, diverse syntax highlighting, and performance optimizations, focusing instead on personal needs.
  • "Dogfooding" Strategy: A critical turning point was actively using his nascent editor for daily tasks, documenting every missing feature or bug, and immediately fixing any annoyance. This practice significantly accelerated development.
  • Technical Deep Dives: The article elaborates on several complex implementation aspects:
    • Cursor Manipulation: Developing high-level cursor commands from primitive operations, considering undo/redo implications.
    • File Browser: Recreating Howl's highly efficient fuzzy-filtering file browser with simple yet effective ranking criteria.
    • Custom Regex Engine: Building a bespoke regex engine from scratch for project search and syntax highlighting, detailing multiple optimization techniques from AST walking to threaded code VMs and byte-level processing.
    • Highlighting and Project Search: Implementing demand-driven caching for highlighting and a multi-threaded, work-stealing approach for project search, ensuring speed even on large codebases.
    • Terminal Integration: Leveraging the alacritty_terminal crate for robust terminal emulator buffers.
    • Efficient Rendering: Using a double-buffered internal screen to minimize ANSI escape sequence output, making remote use over slow connections more performant.

In conclusion, the author argues against the common perception that building one's own tools is pointless. He highlights the significant advantages: a perfectly tailored tool, deep learning across various technical domains, enhanced long-term productivity by eliminating friction, and a rekindled joy and passion for programming through embracing technical challenges.