GNU nano is my editor of choice (2021)

GNU nano is my editor of choice (2021)
ariadne.space

I was a big microsofty, due to comfort mostly, and I was shamed into trying Linux.

Like most people I went Ubuntu first, but wifi drivers at the time were lacking, and nvidia of yore was certainly not better than nvidia of now.

Suffice it to say: I spent a lot of time in the terminal trying to fix things.

Nano was my tool of choice because: honestly the initial learning curve of linux and a modal text editor was far too much.

that said: when I was later shamed into using vi/vim instead of nano.. after my initial hesitation (and a few rounds on vimtutor) I was as confident as I was on nano... what's more, I was "unlocked" and started learning new and faster ways to move.

Being able to replay my last action with "." was nice, and lead me to learn even more native movements.

My watershed moment came when I had to delete a leading series of characters in a file of I think 500 lines.. Not enough to say it's impossible but a real chore.

Nano would not help me in such a situation: but vim did it with no complaints; all I needed to know was the incantation.

I feel like nano shipping as the default editor is a step-back. We have a less powerful tool because we want to attract newbies, but it's the same mistake microsoft makes; When I was into microsoft tooling I had no idea how handicapped I was, the learning curve always had a stop point: everything beyond it was impossible.

I will always be thankful I learned linux in a time where the hand-rails were starting to come up, but that we still used powerful and expressive tools instead of being jailed to the opaque and inflexible systems that have come to dominate for the sake of convenience.

Nano is interesting in that context, because for many it's the "default" editor, which is a bit weird if you came in to Linux/Unix earlier. I bet a lot of people feel the same when it comes to anything besides ed, though ;)