Text Editing Nostagia Conflated with Bicycle Riding:
I learned to ride on paper tape and punch cards... kind of like one of
those toddler's early "walker" toys that looked like a flying saucer
maybe? It had bumpers all around, a built in rattle, didn't move too
fast, and the sling-like seat was easy to clean.
Then I graduated to a tricycle with timesharing and line-oriented text
editors... maybe one of the precursors to VI like ED or EX... it was a
big step up, especially when I got onto a CRT based terminal rather than
a line-printer or thermal style where there was a full record of your
mistakes and lots of paper to toss or recycle after a few hours of
intense editing. My paper-tape/card experience made me very thoughtful
and careful about my work, but still... one could generate a lot of
paper. It was interesting sometimes to have a record of your revisions
(a roll of yellow paper with every line of typing and every line of
"replacement" "insert" or "substitute" commands... especially as I
typed all my creative writing papers in this mode... thought my CR
teacher didn't care for the line-printer style paper I submitted on....
she liked it better than my lousy handwriting, and she fortunately liked
the content of my work.
When VI came along it was like my first Schwinn two-wheeler. The
ability to go back to EX commands on demand for things like global
pattern replaces was like training wheels... I could always revert to
what I knew to get things done. I *still* ride my first Schwinn. My
road racing friends call it a "clunker bike" but it gets me around.
Most of you under 50 were screaming down the streets in those Plastic
Big Wheels you got for Xmas that year!
When Emacs came out, I wanted desperately to be a hipster and use it.
By then VI had some syntax directed editing features, but for the most
part, Emacs just felt like climbing on a fancy english racing bike after
my comfy beach-cruiser style VI... the seat was high and hard, the
handlebars were slung for aerodynamics, not comfort, and the gears were
mostly just confounding... VI with syntax-coloring and brace matching,
etc. was like adding a 3 speed hub to my Schwin... a little more range
for low grinding hills and high speed "wheeeee!" down the highway, but
what do you do with those other 7 gears? And don't you dare get off the
smooth pavement!
I now use whatever IDE is appropriate for a project (I feel I can
ride/drive pretty much anything with wheels, skis, tracks, or pontoons)
but when the going gets tough, I revert to my trustly VI (Schwinn
Cruiser with 3 speed hub, ape-hanger bars and well sprung fat gel seat,
and extra fat knobby tires for gravel, not for speed) and my array of
Unix Text processing tools like SED (cushman mini-bike) and Awk
(go-cart) and PERL (high-displacement dual-sport motorcycle with a full
complement of spare parts in the panniers, barkbusters on the handgrips,
electric and kick start, and flat-proof tires.
Really, text editing is just like riding a bike... you don't forget what
that first "real bike" feels like, and it IS fun to wipe the dust off of
it and cruise down the boardwalk ogling the young and the reckless with
their toned tans, but from one old fart to the rest of you, don't forget
the ape-hangers, the gel seat, and the three speed hub. Nothing beats
a global pattern replace or building a chain of complex macros to "get
you from here to there in comfort and ease"!
Like Curious George, I can VI with both hands behind my back, doing a
wheelie while whistling dixie even though I only dust it off once every
few months or more!
- Steve
On 07/17/2015 09:44 PM, Russell Standish wrote:
I do know about emacs. It survives, because it is bloody good at being
a text editor, particular for programming. I suppose vi is the same -
I've seen some people make vi stand up and sing, but for me, its
behaviour when interacting with vt100 style terminals has always put
me off.
I agree (that both emacs and vi) are good text editors. But emacs, at least,
is much more than just a text editor. I've used emacs as a window manager,
spreadsheet, IDE, file manager, database, etc. It definitely has multiple and
diverse aspects. But Marcus is right that it doesn't field the morons (or
pander to users). The same is perhaps even more true of vi. You have to be a
particular type of person to use the tool. But I think I disagree slightly
with Marcus. Although it doesn't _pander_ to users, it provides a very
navigable (damn near user-friendly, actually) exception system. You don't have
to be a rocket scientist to figure out what went wrong when you do something
stupid. You just have to be a little persistent. Such an exception system is
always necessary for a tool with such a diverse set of functions. And that is
in contrast to the sharply focused tools that dominate open source software.
Mess up the configuration of, say, postfix, and you could spe!
nd a long
while trying to figure out what you did wrong. So emacs is much more like
libreoffice than it may seem at first glance.
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