Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Nano 5.7

lists.gnu.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 157 posts

Re: Nano 5.7

#31

Post by fouric »

As a vim and emacs user, I don't give nano any hate.

I'm surprised when programmers use it, sure, but that's because if my profession was going to require editing text files for hours a day (which it does), I would be happy to trade a steeper learning curve now for a less unpleasant job experience later.

I totally understand why non-programmers don't use it. If your job does not involve you editing text files for hours a day, then nano (or a graphical editor - gedit, kedit, notepad?) is inarguably a better choice for you than emacs or vim - the effort involved will probably never pay off.

ed users: you have my respect, which I will dispense from a distance.

Re: Nano 5.7

#34

Post by apocolyps6 »

minikites wrote: post #8
293984j29384 wrote: post #6

I never understood the hate Nano gets from vi users. Nano does many things quicker and easier than vi. For example, search & replace. Would I code in Nano? No. Do I use Nano to edit configuration files and make other small edits? Absolutely.

>I never understood the hate Nano gets from vi users. They need to justify all the time they spent learning and configuring vi/vim to themselves and to others.

> All those C programmers hating on python are probably just bitter they had to waste all that time learning pointers.

Re: Nano 5.7

#35

Post by k__ »

I'm so glad that Nano and Pico exist.

These are the only terminal editors I really understand.

Re: Nano 5.7

#36

Post by cesarb »

simion314 wrote: post #10
valera_rozuvan wrote: post #5

I don't understand the people who dislike nano as an editor for the *nix system. After spending in it for like 30 minutes - it becomes an indispensable tool for quickly touching up text files anywhere you go to! No matter where I SSH to (*nix systems) - I always had nano available.

Probably the elitist guys, the ones that have their identity defined by the editor they use, the language and framework and the Linux distro/DE/OS they use. Many people just need a tool that does a simple job but does it well, like editing a ini file and adding a line or a word, nano is great for that. (we all know that type of guy that has to tell everyone all the time that he uses Arch and Rust would have fixed eve…

> like editing a ini file and adding a line or a word,

That's precisely the use case that has made me remove nano from every machine I administer since the 90s.

Unless you're really careful to always start nano as "nano -w", its hard word wrapping will introduce line breaks where many configuration file formats (including ini files) don't expect, and it will do so in lines other than the one you're modifying. It's less risky to simply set another editor as the default. (But if you're careful to always use "nano -w", it's a perfectly fine editor.)

Re: Nano 5.7

#37

Post by bsharitt »

293984j29384 wrote: post #6

I never understood the hate Nano gets from vi users. Nano does many things quicker and easier than vi. For example, search & replace. Would I code in Nano? No. Do I use Nano to edit configuration files and make other small edits? Absolutely.

>Nano does many things quicker and easier than vi. For example, search & replace.

There may be instances where Nano does something quicker but search and replace would seem to be a perfect example of the opposite where Nano has taken a quick one line thing in vi and turned it into a multistep process for simplicity.

Re: Nano 5.7

#38

Post by blueblob »

fouric wrote: post #31

As a vim and emacs user, I don't give nano any hate. I'm surprised when programmers use it, sure, but that's because if my profession was going to require editing text files for hours a day (which it does), I would be happy to trade a steeper learning curve now for a less unpleasant job experience later. I totally understand why non-programmers don't use it. If your job does not involve you editing text files for hou…

Yeah, how could you hate on anyone who uses the standard text editor?[0]

[0] https://www.gnu.org/fun/jokes/ed-msg.html

Re: Nano 5.7

#39

Post by zitterbewegung »

fouric wrote: post #31

As a vim and emacs user, I don't give nano any hate. I'm surprised when programmers use it, sure, but that's because if my profession was going to require editing text files for hours a day (which it does), I would be happy to trade a steeper learning curve now for a less unpleasant job experience later. I totally understand why non-programmers don't use it. If your job does not involve you editing text files for hou…

Its more like using the right tool for what you actually want to do.

0. Use cat and output to a file to really quickly make a new file from your clipboard or from the web

1. Nano is great for editing config / text files quickly and the learning curve is really low due to a more modern design.

2. vim can be reliably found everywhere on nearly any unix machine but the learning curve is much higher initial learning curve vim has more customization than vi and has basically replaced vi on modern installations of unix

3. emacs has out of the box has a learning curve less than vi but can't be found everywhere and you probably have to install it but it also has a large amount of extendability. the initial learning curve is a bit low but then it gets higher and higher. It also has multiple versions and a GUI and a package manager.

Re: Nano 5.7

#40

Post by hknapp »

philliphaydon wrote: post #7
BooneJS wrote: post #4

Nano was my gateway editor when learning *nix in college. I tried vi only to have to close the window to exit. I think nano can continue to safely bring in converts from Windows and MacOS.

I LOVE Nano. I just can’t figure out vi/vim.

https://danielmiessler.com/study/vim/

it will probably take 4+ days to become faster editing text with vim than nano, and then you likely won't look back. Come back to the guide with decreasing frequency to add more knowledge to your vim arsenal.

Post reply on HN