Vim is the worst editor, except all the other editors

There is indeed a massive advantage of a mouse over a keyboard-based interface - it's far, far more discoverable for novice or occasional users. In fact, I'd venture to say the mouse (and the corresponding advent of discoverable graphical interfaces) was the primary driver of making computers accessible to non-techies and hence largely responsible for the computing revolution.

But, a keyboard-based interface is still more efficient for someone who can put in the time to learning how to use it efficiently (and customizing it to their specific work), and uses it regularly enough to maintain that knowledge. For a lot of people who write code for a living, a text editor definitely falls in that area.

I'm going to take the bait one more time. That's not research - it's someone talking about research in the abstract. There are no details but it's clear from the context that they're talking about something completely different.

"In the early (pre-release) days of Lisa, we had command keys instead of pull-down menus. One of the primary reasons we abandoned command keys was the difficulty of coming up with fixed definitions that could be easily transported from application to application. Users were constantly confused."

"It takes two seconds to decide upon which special-function key to press."

No, it doesn't. When my cursor is on a function name I want to change in vim, I type 'ciw' and then word is gone and I'm in insert mode replacing it. There's no 2 seconds about it.

Your research doesn't apply to this scenario and you know it. But it's fine - you do it your way, we'll do it ours. There's no problem with that.

You may notice that the ADM-3A didn't have a CAPS LOCK key. A common mod involved soldering a couple of jumpers so pressing CAPS twice in rapid succession switched caps lock mode on and off. I did that to mine; back then it was fairly common for some systems to only accept uppercase commands. The Teletype ASR-33 didn't have CAPS LOCK either.

I don't know if Bill Joy modded his ADM-3A, but for anyone who wonders why vi uses esc instead of caps lock to switch modes it's because there was no caps lock key back then. I believe Bill Joy and the vi cartel deliberately suppressed the caps lock feature on early terminals to make vi users miserable in the future.

The comment from lutusp was deleted before I finished composing my reply, but since I went to so much work (five minutes) finding the relevant evidence to refute him I'll repost it:

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lutusp 2 minutes ago | link

> You repeatedly claim that vi is lame because it has to work with keyboards with no control keys. What? "vi is lame because it has to work with keyboards with no control keys"? I never said that anywhere. You will now try to find your source for this lie, then you will apologize for lying. For God's sake -- how can you people expect to have useful conversations while making stuff up? If you had said, "I think I heard you say..." or something like that, I would cut you some slack for being stupid and irresponsible, but not under these circumstances. FIND THE QUOTE. THEN, REALIZING THAT IT DOES NOT EXIST, APOLOGIZE. I won't hold my breath for you to accept adult responsibilities.

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OK, I'll take the troll bait. You wrote: "I never said that [vi is lame because it has to work with keyboards with no control keys] anywhere. You will now try to find your source for this lie, then you will apologize for lying."

I'm not going to apologize to you for anything, and you show yourself to be quite a jerk telling me that I will apologize for pointing out your factual errors. You don't even bother to address the facts I posted. But showing you where you wrote what you claim you never wrote is easy. You can find all of these quotes in your own comments:

* "The reason? vi must be able to work with a keyboard that doesn't have any control keys..."

* "... the control scheme in vi and vim arises from the requirement that it avoid the use of control keys. That was a design requirement, because the original machines it was designed for did not have control or navigation keys. How do I know this? I used those computers, and I used the early versions of the programs under discussion."

* "And do you know why this arrangement exists? Because there were teletype terminals and early glass terminals that didn't have control keys. No control keys, no way to exploit their existence."

* "I wrote an incremental improvement over vi, one that exploited the existence of control keys..." [Implying that vi did not or could not use the control keys, which didn't exist back then anyway according to you.]

* "It's false when comparing mouse use against a modern keyboard with control and function keys, and it is certainly false for the limited keyboards for which vi/vim was designed, those keyboards that result in vi/vim not being able to exploit control characters."

* "Having to enter additional keystrokes, a throwback to a computer keyboard that either didn't have control keys or couldn't exploit them, makes editing 'faster and more powerful'? Nice reasoning."

* "Vim still imitates vi, and vi still imitates 1970. Extremely inefficient, steep learning curve in order not to press readily available control keys."

* "As soon as someone invented the control key and its purpose, and well before Douglas Engelbart invented the mouse, the retirement clock started ticking for vi and vim." [I guess not since vim is installed on all Unix and Linux distros and comes with OSX].

I provided links showing the ADM-3A and Teletype Model 33 keyboard layouts -- both with control keys. And that was the standard keyboard layout back then. Show me a terminal that was in widespread use when vi came out in 1976 that didn't have a control key. Not that it really matters if you find some weird example, because vi was specifically designed for the ADM-3A and similar terminals available in 1976 that had control keys. That's from Bill Joy.

Your repeated claims that vi was designed for paper terminals, or that vi is derived from ed (rather than the reality that vi incorporated ed) are contradicted by knowledge of vi but also by the authors of vi. You wrote:

* "vi, which had to be able operate with a 'paper terminal', essentially a roll of paper as a display..."

* "I can say this in vi/vim's favor: it's a step up from ed, its predecessor."

Both obviously false.

> OK, I'll take the troll bait. You wrote: "I never said that [vi is lame because it has to work with keyboards with no control keys] anywhere. You will now try to find your source for this lie, then you will apologize for lying."

Read much? You claimed that I said "vi is lame". In point of fact, I never said any such thing anywhere. Prove me wrong -- locate a quote that does not exist. You're inventing arguments to have with yourself.

I just went through your list of quotes, and everything in the list is true. "... there were teletype terminals and early glass terminals that didn't have control keys ..." Care to dispute this truth?

> I'm not going to apologize to you for anything ...

Of course not. You also won't avoid making things up as you have done in this and prior posts. Which leads an intelligent person to wonder what the point is of trying to discuss things with you.