Re: [MLUG] web development tools

[Rick <EMAIL:PROTECTED>]

Ok, you can make fun of my mother, but don't mess with my text editor...


Mike Miller wrote:
> The reason I will never teach vi is that it is a ridiculous little piece 
> of junk -- that is how every student will see it.  Learning it is a 
> waste of time for them.  It is very awkward to use.  It was designed for 
> use over a 300 baud modem, not for modern computing (I think I sent the 
> Bill Joy article about this a few weeks back).  I know that long-time 
> users like vi, but they are just stuck in the past unable to move forward.

How is never having to move your hands off the keyboard "awkward"? 
Having multiple "windows" that you can easily move text back and forth 
from, again, without ever moving your hands from the keyboard is tough?

Frankly, I think this comes down to a usage issue. Many "sysadmin types" 
will prefer vi for the simple reason that it allows them to do their job 
more easily. It does for me. gVim gets installed on every box I own, 
windows *and* linux, because it is hands down a better editor than 
note/wordpad. The only real compeitition that I'm familiar with would be 
UltraEdit (and that's largely due to the "select column of text feature" 
which can pretty easily be replicated with a little sed/awk work).

> The other reason I will not teach vi is that I haven't used it in many 
> years and I don't really know it anymore and I don't feel any need to 
> learn it.  The one thing worth knowing:  How to get out of vi if the 
> system uses $EDITOR and puts you into vi for some reason.

Right, because ":q" is pretty tough.

> I guess you don't use emacs so you don't know what you're missing.  I'm 
> not sure what it means to say that Unix can do what emacs does.  I can't 
> think of an interpretation of that statement that is true.

sed -e 's/vi/emacs/' mikes_above_paragraphs

> People always say that emacs is "bloated."  Sure, let's say that it is 
> bloated -- it does have tons of functionality.  It will take about 40 MB 
> on your HDD and a few unnoticable extra milliseconds to load on some 
> systems and it will use 11 MB of RAM when loaded in its own window or 9 
> MB when loaded in the current window.  But this is 2007!!  Even an older 
> machine will not have a problem with that.  In other words, the bloat is 
> not noticable when comparing performance with nano.

The only reason to use nano is because you're on an embedded system that 
 can't handle vi. And, if it can't handle vi, then emacs is just plain out.

> I do agree that nano is good.  It uses less HDD, uses much less memory 
> and it probably loads faster but I can't detect differences on that time 
> scale.  It has much less functionality than emacs, but what it has is 
> good and works well.
>
> Mike

--
Let's have a traditional thanks giving this year...invite the neighbors 
over for dinner..then kill them and take their land!!
----

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