--- title: Writing my own text editor, and daily-driving it | daily.dev description: A developer spent 2 years building their own TUI text editor in Rust after being dissatisfied with existing options like Helix, Neovim, and Emacs. Key... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/writing-my-own-text-editor-and-daily-driving-it-5hnkcdhhx twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: Writing my own text editor, and daily-driving it | daily.dev og:description: A developer spent 2 years building their own TUI text editor in Rust after being dissatisfied with existing options like Helix, Neovim, and Emacs. Key... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/writing-my-own-text-editor-and-daily-driving-it-5hnkcdhhx og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/5HNkCDHHx.png og:image:alt: Writing my own text editor, and daily-driving it og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Writing my own text editor, and daily-driving it **[Hacker News](https://daily.dev/sources/hn)** · 16 min read · 2 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary A developer spent 2 years building their own TUI text editor in Rust after being dissatisfied with existing options like Helix, Neovim, and Emacs. Key engineering challenges covered include cursor manipulation, a fuzzy file browser with simple but effective ranking heuristics, a custom regex engine with multiple performance optimizations (threaded code VM, CPS form, vtable-free dispatch), demand-driven incremental syntax highlighting, multi-threaded project-wide search with work-stealing, and an integrated terminal emulator using the alacritty_terminal crate. The author advocates for building personal tools as a way to learn deeply, improve productivity, and rediscover joy in programming. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [A desktop made for one](https://daily.dev/posts/a-desktop-made-for-one-a0rezjpzu) · Hacker News · 124 upvotes · 4 comments - [Fine, I’ll build my own text editor](https://daily.dev/posts/fine-i-ll-build-my-own-text-editor-mlxtdf0rd) · Lobsters · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Synthetic sagas](https://daily.dev/posts/synthetic-sagas-8tm8q2cib) · Jamie Brandon · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [My Rust dev setup in 2026 — Bitfield Consulting](https://daily.dev/posts/my-rust-dev-setup-in-2026-bitfield-consulting-t1ultt2tg) · Bitfield Consulting · 67 upvotes · 4 comments --- Tags: [#rust](https://daily.dev/tags/rust) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/writing-my-own-text-editor-and-daily-driving-it-5hnkcdhhx) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"Writing my own text editor, and daily-driving it","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/writing-my-own-text-editor-and-daily-driving-it-5hnkcdhhx","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/writing-my-own-text-editor-and-daily-driving-it-5hnkcdhhx"},"datePublished":"2026-03-11T08:03:02.611Z","dateModified":"2026-03-11T08:03:28.043Z","description":"A developer spent 2 years building their own TUI text editor in Rust after being dissatisfied with existing options like Helix, Neovim, and Emacs. Key...","image":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/s--HRgLpUt6--/f_auto/v1722860399/public/Placeholder%2003","thumbnailUrl":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/s--HRgLpUt6--/f_auto/v1722860399/public/Placeholder%2003","isAccessibleForFree":true,"articleSection":"Hacker News","inLanguage":"en","publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180}},"author":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Hacker News","logo":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/t_logo,f_auto/v1/logos/hn","url":"https://daily.dev/sources/hn"},"commentCount":0,"discussionUrl":"https://daily.dev/posts/writing-my-own-text-editor-and-daily-driving-it-5hnkcdhhx","interactionStatistic":[{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"LikeAction"},"userInteractionCount":2},{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"CommentAction"},"userInteractionCount":0}],"keywords":"rust","timeRequired":"PT16M"} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https://daily.dev"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Hacker News","item":"https://daily.dev/sources/hn"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"name":"Writing my own text editor, and daily-driving it"}]} ```