GNU nano is my editor of choice

Nano feels a lot like windows notepad. Still my favorite editor and beginner friendly (as far as unix editors go).

I'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

The 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 snobbery. Which is a shame.

That said... it is worth considering that learning tools like editors is an investment in one's self and pushing through preference to genuinely try to use what others find value in can, if nothing else, help you better understand what you value and adjust your tooling to fit (much like the author adjusted Nano to be more like vim).

That's a pretty nuanced distinction though and I am glad that the author feels comfortable owning their preference and not feeling pressured by peers to conform to more "acceptable" choices while still having tried and learned from them.

there are far worse choices. for quick stuff, i either emacs -q or nano more or less interchangably, and in my larval stage i lived in nano (and pine!) for many years happily enough.

These days, i find that my movement key memory will betray me in nano at the worst time(s), so i tend to stick with emacs -q -nw for light-and-fast stuff, but when that's annoying to obtain, i'll happily fall back and think more carefully about my keystrokes.

nano was my cli editor of choice because I was overwhelmed by vim. For years I felt subpar and thought that I should learn using vim. I'm using vim for some years now but I don't really make much use of it's features, maybe an occasional cut and paste, which probably can easily be done with nano too.