> To the programmers who created vi and emacs, who were steeped in > experience with non-visual command line editors, I believe vi and > emacs must have been very intuitive indeed. To people who grew up in > the Macintosh/Windows generation, they will be quite far from > intuitive; there will be no experiences wired into their brains for > the subconscious processes to work with.
I would tend to emphatically agree with this. When I took my first programming class, I couldn't use vi or emacs to save my life, instead, thanks to my 'Macintosh/Windows generation' experience, I used JCreator. Then I got interested in Linux, and started trying to use emacs, since I heard that it was the 'editor of choice' of the EE/ECEN department. Since I didn't know how to map Control to Caps-Lock, it was a little difficult, and when I started trying to use Vim it was a little easier to hit Escape or 'i' or :command. Then, as I used Vim more and more, I got to the point where IDE's drive me nuts for 2 reasons. 1--I can't do everything without taking my hands off the home row (possibly because I don't know how the IDE would make this possible, if it did so), and 2--because I don't know how to use them and that means I'd face another learning curve like the one I had with Vim. Experience, again, is the key factor here. -- Alex Esplin /* PLUG: http://plug.org, #utah on irc.freenode.net Unsubscribe: http://plug.org/mailman/options/plug Don't fear the penguin. */
