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Comment by dylz | Hacker News Reader

Let's discuss text editors. Anyone?

I like, and frequently use, nano. There, I said it.

Now vim and emacs users can both mock my child-like ignorance of real text editing.

I will join in on the love for nano. If you are just doing simple things like editing config files it is all you need. I don't use vim often enough ever get really comfortable with it.

Perverse! Nano is actually more difficult to use than vi over time. Sad, but true. The first time you have to learn the arcane control-keys to search for something, you've already lost, because vim is approximately as arcane, but much faster.

I don't think I've ever had to search for anything in nano or vi to get a system into a state where I can use an editor with good ol' Ctrl-F. But then I'm not hot-patching a server over an acoustic coupler from a phone booth in rural Nevada, or whatever hardcore sysadmins do.

Death to Emacs! It's as arrogant as it is shoddy; it has a narrow provincial name for the Alt key, and it makes you learn Lisp in order to make it handle backspaces properly!

Also, you Limeys need to learn how to spell.

(There, that should get the conversational juices flowing...)

The "narrow [, [sic]] provincial name for the Alt key" is actually what it was once called. And backspace just works as expected in a unix environment.

> (There, that should get the conversational juices flowing...)

Sane people here know when to engage in a conversation, no trolling needed.

Upvoted this for the first part (noticing the information while missing the pointless quibble about comma use, which should have been a red flag), before I saw the second. A "take back upvote" option would be nice...

Well, I'm an emacs guy, because I've used it for 30 years, and the commands are burned into my fingertips by now. I'll admit that vi is more logical and easier to learn, though.

And I don't get "religious" about editors except in jest...

I think that's what it comes down to: vi is easier to learn, but emacs is much more powerful. My current job involves using a very esoteric in-house language, which doesn't have any IDEs or even Notepad++ text-formatting extensions; I'm thinking about learning emacs, which can be programmed relatively easily to become little less than an IDE for it.

(Speaking of, behold another holy war: IDEs versus command-line development...)

I'm a weirdo. I love visual studio and I love vim. Windows and Linux. Haskell and C#. Etc. I more I learn the less I think I know.

lol @ Vim users that have to write configuration files, memorize complicated keyboard shortcuts, and install 20 plugins just to be able to copy and paste text between files. It's 2016, try using a real editor like Atom.

(Am I doing it right?)

Yes, you certainly are -- you hateful covert Emacs advocate! I know what you're up to, you're trying to discredit the good editor so that you can quietly build up your overbuilt piece of crap! Atom is built on Emacs, isn't it?!

(/s. All the /s in the world.)

Atom? What is this, 2015? Sublime is still king, Atom was a passing fad.

I use vim w/o plugins and with the stock configuration.

I frequently have two files open side-by-side.

If I want to copy the current line in the left file to the right file, the keystrokes are:

    yy<Ctrl+w>lp

It's really not that hard to copy between files in Vim. :P

A user who has been using vi[m] and emacs for 20+ years - what are you trying to say? Please don't tell me that I should just use the mouse and context menus, I'm so much faster with touch typing....

[EDIT: yes, I know both editors very well and have config files for both; does this make me "worse" than someone who has not taken the time to learn how to configure his/her editor?]

> (Am I doing it right?)

No, you're using Atom

Notepad++, anyone?

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