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Comment by xrstf | Hacker News Reader

I use it constantly, because I'm quicker making small edits with it than with vim. I would sorely miss it if it's not installed on a server.

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I hear this faster for small things but if you use vim I would say I can make changes in a small document twice as fast.

They should have a new tag line:

Nano the plain text editor for non-Vim maybe EMACS users?

This is only true if you use vim at least once a week forever. Some people don't want to study a manual to change 1 config line. Call me crazy I know.

Yeah, maybe I'm just weird, but I like it when the down-arrow key makes the cursor go down a line.

Not saying they don't exist, but I don't think I've ever encountered a vim instance where that didn't happen.

I recall many frustrating days in college when I first learned vim but not enough to configure it (or was to lazy to). The arrow keys inserted control characters in edit mode on the basic Linux install I had at the time and on the school's computers (circa 2000-2004). It was annoying. It turned me off to vim for a while, but emacs and I were a better fit anyways.

Yeah, maybe I'm just weird, but modal editing is kind of a pain unless you do it every day. It's just a little too arcane for making a quick edit to a file in /etc. It's probably even more natural for me having grown up in the shadow of the University of Washington, so PINE was the popular email client and PICO was it's editor.

Don't get me wrong, I've watched Vim power users do amazing things in that editor but those people are not me and I can't find a good reason to climb that particular mountain.

arrows work in vim as default since 2000???

vim file_foo

press i for interactive and make changes then press :wq

:) I have that embedded in my brain after all these years.

You forgot ESC after making changes ;)

nano file_foo

make changes

ctrl-O-Enter - save ctrl-X-Enter - exit

Simpler, I think?

Don't even need the ^O, it asks if you want to save on exit if there are modifications.

Many many people who need to occasionally edit text in a terminal don't know how to use Vim OR Emacs.

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