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Am I the Only One Who Uses a Text Editor to Edit Files?

blog.peepcode.com

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Re: Am I the Only One Who Uses a Text Editor to Edit Files?

#31

Post by dutchflyboy »

Que wrote: post #30
btipling wrote: post #3

Am I the only one that found staring at orange hard on the eyes? I guess I should give the author credit for all the work that they put into this rant, seems like a blog post could have done just the same without all the fancy graphics and what not.

The site and the god awful grid background image (appears on doubleclick) was enough to inspire me to make a new bookmarklet. My first impression, article aside, was that the site made baby Jesus cry. Edit: In retrospect I think it was the combination of the orange and the grid background (I have a tendency to doubleclick on everything) that really put it over the edge for me, the main design isn't terrible.

Hmm, I actually find the site quite nice. It's quite simple, readable and with some quite nice graphics.

But I agree, that background image is really horrible.

Re: Am I the Only One Who Uses a Text Editor to Edit Files?

#32

Post by jrockway »

Periodic wrote: post #17
jrockway wrote: post #9

Typical designer. "Oh no, my text editor displays its status to me using text." Yeah. Some people get their eye-candy feed from lolcat videos, and then use their tools for work. (My desktop doesn't even have wobbly windows! Just a 1-px red border! How can I get any work done that way!) Also, I'm fairly certain that eproject gets rid of the "wall of text" that disqualifies Emacs. In a perl project, for example, I can…

> Just a 1-px red border! You don't use xmonad, perchance? It's the only one I know of that uses the one red pixel in the default scheme. I guess Awesome or the like might too, but I haven't used them in a long time. Tiling window managers are a great example of something that is less "advanced" but more useful. And as far as I can tell, both Emacs and Vim can easily satisfy all but the "beautiful" requirement for hi…

Yup, I use xmonad :)

http://github.com/jrockway/dotfiles/blob/master/xmonad/xmona...

Re: Am I the Only One Who Uses a Text Editor to Edit Files?

#33

Post by FlemishBeeCycle »

sjbach wrote: post #14

I wrote a snappy Ruby-based Vim plugin called LustyExplorer which does fuzzy/flex matching for opening files and switching buffers: http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=1890

Not to downplay your contributions (thank you), but just letting people know about other options:

FuzzyFinder Textmate http://github.com/jamis/fuzzyfinder_textmate (Unfortunately only works with fuzzyfinder up until v2.16)

and more recently

Command-T http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=3025

Re: Am I the Only One Who Uses a Text Editor to Edit Files?

#34

Post by viraptor »

breck wrote: post #23

One solution: Use fewer files. I try to keep the number of files and folders for a project to as few as possible. Then you spend much less time opening and searching for files. As more people get involved with a project, you'll have more files, but you should make an active effort to keep the numbers minimized. Here's a little script I wrote to give quick stats on a project's size: http://breckyunits.com/metrics_for_…

> Use fewer files.

Why? What does that have to do with text editing capabilities? The number of files depends (or at least should) on what you do, not on how bad your tools are. If you limit the number of files to limit the file-opening time, you increase the fragment-searching time in the gigantic-file-of-doom. Also you lose the possibility to make local one-file changes which are self-explanatory if you look at the VCS history.

I'm not sure why would I want to make my work harder just to make up for the tool's features...

Re: Am I the Only One Who Uses a Text Editor to Edit Files?

#35

Post by FlemishBeeCycle »

cscotta wrote: post #19
jrockway wrote: post #9

Typical designer. "Oh no, my text editor displays its status to me using text." Yeah. Some people get their eye-candy feed from lolcat videos, and then use their tools for work. (My desktop doesn't even have wobbly windows! Just a 1-px red border! How can I get any work done that way!) Also, I'm fairly certain that eproject gets rid of the "wall of text" that disqualifies Emacs. In a perl project, for example, I can…

I think your attitude is overly dismissive. At least, I'd have a hard time writing someone off as a "typical designer" (a bit of a tired stereotype) if they're experienced in both vim and emacs, let alone work for Peepcode. The author offered a sustained, reasoned argument for better navigation within projects. I agree that as a programmer, I care about functionality and tools that get out of my way so that I can get…

As far as I know, Fuzzy Finder Textmate only works with Fuzzy Finder up till version 2.16.

Re: Am I the Only One Who Uses a Text Editor to Edit Files?

#36

Post by jrockway »

matthavener wrote: post #4

VIM has a similar file finder using a plugin called Fuzzy Finder http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=1984

It's almost like programmers write programs to help them get work done! And I thought you were supposed to solve problems by making a big orange web page whining about them...

Re: Am I the Only One Who Uses a Text Editor to Edit Files?

#37

Post by armandososa »

Que wrote: post #30
btipling wrote: post #3

Am I the only one that found staring at orange hard on the eyes? I guess I should give the author credit for all the work that they put into this rant, seems like a blog post could have done just the same without all the fancy graphics and what not.

The site and the god awful grid background image (appears on doubleclick) was enough to inspire me to make a new bookmarklet. My first impression, article aside, was that the site made baby Jesus cry. Edit: In retrospect I think it was the combination of the orange and the grid background (I have a tendency to doubleclick on everything) that really put it over the edge for me, the main design isn't terrible.

What I can't understand is: why would you double-click a webpage?

Re: Am I the Only One Who Uses a Text Editor to Edit Files?

#38

Post by [deleted] »

tree_of_item wrote: post #20
jrockway wrote: post #9

Typical designer. "Oh no, my text editor displays its status to me using text." Yeah. Some people get their eye-candy feed from lolcat videos, and then use their tools for work. (My desktop doesn't even have wobbly windows! Just a 1-px red border! How can I get any work done that way!) Also, I'm fairly certain that eproject gets rid of the "wall of text" that disqualifies Emacs. In a perl project, for example, I can…

The thesis of the article isn't "pretty > learning and thinking", and I don't think your distinction between the two is valid. User interfaces shouldn't be left to rot in the name of "learning and thinking". It's important to consider the way something looks and functions as it affects your ability to use it considerably. Form matters just as much as content. You can learn and think and have things be pretty all at o…

[deleted]

Re: Am I the Only One Who Uses a Text Editor to Edit Files?

#39

Post by armandososa »

devinj wrote: post #27
psyklic wrote: post #21

Am I the only one who almost didn't scroll down, thinking that the keyboard graphic was the thing to see?

No. It's a terrible webpage design. Am I the only one who still values things like http://www.useit.com/alertbox/scrolling-attention.html ?

Yes. The "user's don't scroll" meme has been confirmed as a myth.

Re: Am I the Only One Who Uses a Text Editor to Edit Files?

#40

Post by TallGuyShort »

ErrantX wrote: post #13

My favourite text editor still has to be Notepad++ on Windows. I've never found another (both for Windows or Linux) that was as snappy and simple. shrug (never quite "got" emacs - it reminds me of the crappy, buggy, horrid PIC IDE we used at uni)

I was very impressed with Notepad++. I've switched to vim simply because I've been doing more and more work on remote unix machines - and it's so much easier to just open up vim through ssh. Now that I'm used to how to use it, I also appreciate how easy it is to get a dark color scheme that's easy on the eyes.

But yes - a big upvote for notepad++. Very lightweight and easy to work with.

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