Can someone explain to me why it would be beneficial to learn these? Most of the time if you needed to edit some file couldn't you just <fav text editor here> file.*? I am trying to understand this. Thanks
E.g if you are connected to a remote server and you need to change a file, how do you do it with say VSCode or Sublime etc? Download it to your machine, edit it, save it, then re-upload? Sure that works for the occasional once-a-month kinda thing, but it is a bit convoluted.
It is much easier and faster to just edit the file there and then on the server. Especially if you are doing multiple changes.
Vi really is very simple - you just need to remember esc, i, x and :wq and that is basically all you need to know to be able to do basic edits a file on pretty much ANY server you'll ever connect to (except perhaps windows or a super-stripped down cloud image).
As long as I have nano or can apt-install it then I'm happy to ssh in and do it that way; but it doesn't seem more convoluted to use GUI tools necessarily.
In the cases of vim/emacs, people who dive deep enough will often find them superior than <previous fav text editor>.
> In the cases of vim/emacs, people who dive deep enough will often find them superior than <previous fav text editor>.
Yeah after reading so many vim vs. emacs memes I was really surprised when my git commit message opened one of them for the first time. ( I didn't surround the message in quotes or something.)