What? Nobody's standing up for ed [1]?
Ingrates. ;-)
Relative merits of editors aside, one maxim I've taught to 'nix admins
for many years is that they *must* be proficient in whatever editor(s)
are available in the default install and/or single-user boot mode of
all versions of 'nix that they need to run...because otherwise they'll
find themselves stuck in awkward situations. Once Upon A Time, that
meant that they needed to be able to use ed; today, it probably means
that they need to be able to use vi/ex. [And oh-by-the-way, let's not
forget the ex side of vi; fluency in constructs such as
:.,$!sort -u | grep @
can be incredibly useful. ]
[1] The "original" Unix editor, whose sole diagnostic message is "?".
