no matter what you editor you use, set EDITOR to whatever you want, then when you want to edit files as root do `sudo -e /path/to/file` thanks me later
Or even simpler use `sudoedit /path/to/file/`
GNU nano is my editor of choice
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Re: GNU nano is my editor of choice
#22I've been a really big fan of Micro[1]. A single binary with excellent out of the box features. Mouse mode, syntax highlighting, tabs etc [1] https://github.com/zyedidia/micro
but are there vim keybindings?
Re: GNU nano is my editor of choice
#23Why is nano the favourite editor? What's the upsides and why does it stay the favourite?
It's very simple. It behaves like users would expect something like Word to behave. Editors like Vim have a learning curve because they introduce the concept of modal editing which takes some getting used to.
I can't even properly explain why I like Vim. I guess it's the same way, by habit. When in a non-modal editor I'm just very clumsy. Trying to type commands but inserting text instead by mistake and so on.
Re: GNU nano is my editor of choice
#24How do you navigate text in nano?
Slowly
As much as we all enjoy low effort posts, there are a number of shortcuts to move around, as well as the general "find" option.
Re: GNU nano is my editor of choice
#25The thesis of this post is roughly that nano, when configured, is enough of an editor for the author. Which is totally fine! People should be happy with their tools and not feel pressured by popularity to use what others use (vim, emacs being prime competitors in this case). Alas, nano (and pico before it) have a certain stigma among more "experienced" Unix users that more or less boils down to gatekeeping and snobbe…
It’s not really gatekeeping or snobbery to say that knowing vim is more useful simply because I can log into any Linux machine on the planet and edit a text file without having to install an editor.
Re: GNU nano is my editor of choice
#26no matter what you editor you use, set EDITOR to whatever you want, then when you want to edit files as root do `sudo -e /path/to/file` thanks me later
Or even simpler use `sudoedit /path/to/file/`
sudo -e is less characters to type tho, though I guess you can do sudoe and complete it...choices, choices
Re: GNU nano is my editor of choice
#27I've always liked nano, as it seemed closest in functionality to the text editors I used to work with in DOS (which set the UI standard that I measure interacting with console applications from)
I wasn't aware people have added so much extra functionality to it. Nowadays I turn to vim but I will give nano a closer look
Re: GNU nano is my editor of choice
#28> The vim vs emacs flame war
I doubt that there is any ongoing vim vs. emacs flamewar. Most people are probably arguing about VSCode vs. JetBrains these days. My impression as an Emacs user is that if someone says they use Vim, I think "hey, one of us". (nano I guess falls into that category, but I bet nano users are missing out on some timesaving innovations from the last few years, and nothing frustrates me more than people that have inefficient workflows because they eschew learning new things.)
> Emacs Lisp is not really a particularly fun language to use simply for customizing the behavior of an editor — as they say, Emacs is a nice operating system, it just needs a good editor.
I doubt one would like an OS where the SDK only supports a language they don't like. I know this was an attempt to reuse a quote, but I think they actually like the editor and dislike the OS, which is the opposite of what sentiment that quote conveys. (Here's another tired meme: "eighty megs and constantly swapping".)
Emacs Lisp is actually very interesting in its staying power. It was designed from the ground up to write programs that the programmer is in front of all day, and that's very different than the enterprise / systems programming use cases that modern languages optimize for (where tens of thousands of copies of your program need to run unattended). The API and tooling matter more than the actual programming language, and I've looked around at other editor platforms and they're just not there yet. You can't C-M-x to run the line of code you're currently editing. You have to write HTML and CSS to supply preferences to your plugin. It's so weird to me how actively extension-hostile the popular editors are these days, and how hard they make manipulating the contents of the editor.
Re: GNU nano is my editor of choice
#29I've been a really big fan of Micro[1]. A single binary with excellent out of the box features. Mouse mode, syntax highlighting, tabs etc [1] https://github.com/zyedidia/micro
It is great. It should have been the default editor in some Linux distros that settled on nano!
Re: GNU nano is my editor of choice
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
Slowly
As much as we all enjoy low effort posts, there are a number of shortcuts to move around, as well as the general "find" option. https://www.nano-editor.org/dist/latest/cheatsheet.html
If we're gonna learn a stack of key combo shortcuts, why not go with a editor that was designed with that in mind (i.e. key combos organized into a hierarchy rather than a huge flat mess)?