[Gllug] ed vs emacs/vi, was: ed vs emacs, was: OpenMoko Neo Freerunner

[David Damerell]

On Tuesday, 12 May 2009, general_email at technicalbloke.com wrote:
>Speaking as a representative of the current century I have to say at
>least pico vaguely resembles a modern editor and has an interface the
>uninitiated might have a shot in hell of deciphering.

Why would I care about that? I only have to learn my editor once; I
have to use it every day. 

>For editing
>smallish text files it is perfectly comfortable to work in, far nicer
>than vi et al.

vi does not have the characteristic that if you open a file and save
it again without doing anything, the default behaviour is to wrap long
lines. pico does. This alone makes it quite unsuitable for system
administration (or any other purpose involving >80 column lines).

>For working on large files and complex programs I am
>flabbergasted anyone would want to use a crusty old terminal app these
>days when there's so many nice editors out there like G-edit, Kate &
>Notepad++.

Selecting an editor based on the GUI junk around it is like trying to
put in nails with a chocolate hammer because it tastes nice. Give me
the crusty old _powerful_ terminal application any day of the week -
even before you consider that I can use my editor over an ssh
connection (which I do _all the time_ at work and at home) and you
can't without, at best, a twisty maze of X connection forwarding.

-- 
David Damerell <damerell at chiark.greenend.org.uk> Distortion Field!
Today is Second Thursday, May.
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