As far as I remember they stated that plugins won't be supported back when I tried it. No idea if that has changed.
Of course the plugins need to be written but my point is that they cannot be written at the time.
I understand and support the idea of Helix to be useful out of the box for many use cases. However for me the editor in its current form is not sufficient. As I already stated I use many (wonderful) plugins in Neovim. I could not justify going away from the status quo because it is pretty good. I have my setup configured so the ease to jump into is not really a valid argument for me and I suspect for many more Vim users.
I get what you're saying. The problem is that it is not really a matter of if plugins are supported or not. Helix will have plugins in the future. There is work being done towards it – mainly design work right now and they try to figure out how to approach this best, writing "demos" etc.
Plugin systems are not easy and they have a clear vision of how this should NOT end up working. In their current state putting in work into a Plugin-System does not make much sense (limited developer time that is better spend elsewhere) regarding their project goal.
As i said you can argue that the project is in its infancy and does not work for you because of that. But the main reason is not the support or lack of plugins. As i said, even if there was a plugin system you could argue that there are no plugins available for the things you want – ending up at exactly the same point you're today. Having a Plugin-System does not magically makes hundred of useful plugins appear out of nowhere.
I don't think you get my point. In the end it's simple. Helix misses many features I want and that exist in (N)Vim. To support all these features you need plugins because they cannot be all maintained by core and everyone wants different features anyways.
As long as there is no way to extend the editor for me or for anyone else (aside from contributing to core), I am not interested in adopting it when I have another option that already does all of these things I want.
So yes you need plugins but for that you first need a plugin system. If that takes a while I am totally fine with it. I am all for good software. But why should I currently choose it over nvim?
Helix will get plugin support sometime, it's basically a matter of when not if.
Also; the scripting languages seems to become an S-Expression like lisp dialect.
Of course the plugins need to be written but my point is that they cannot be written at the time.
I understand and support the idea of Helix to be useful out of the box for many use cases. However for me the editor in its current form is not sufficient. As I already stated I use many (wonderful) plugins in Neovim. I could not justify going away from the status quo because it is pretty good. I have my setup configured so the ease to jump into is not really a valid argument for me and I suspect for many more Vim users.