11–20 of 198 posts
One thing I noticed that with Claude Code and Codex running in the terminal, I tend to use VS Code much less than before, and found myself opening files in vim more often. It just looks like, for me, the agent development brings me back to using the basic tools, like many years ago, before VS Code existed.
The history and endurance of vi is impressive. I never thought I would be using the same editor today that I started using in the mid 90s because it was more l33t. The comments about LLM contributed code seems like a specific axe to grind that otherwise detracts from a nice history lesson.
I started learning vi around the same time, but in my case (since I was expecting to work on Unix systems for decades, which has proven true) it was "because it'll always be there." I.e. if you're SSHing into a server to fix a problem, it's possible that /usr/bin/emacs won't be there (perhaps the problem you're fixing is that /usr isn't mounting), but you can nearly always count on /bin/vi being available: if you can…
You don't need emacs on a server. TRAMP is built-in and can open remote files in a local instance over SSH, SMB, FTP, ADB, or docker/podman.
But I'd still rather use it than just about any other text editor, just for the simplicity of that muscle memory alone. I have way more stuff to keep in my head than I have room for and I can't afford to expend more than about 0.0001% of context on a text editor.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I started learning vi around the same time, but in my case (since I was expecting to work on Unix systems for decades, which has proven true) it was "because it'll always be there." I.e. if you're SSHing into a server to fix a problem, it's possible that /usr/bin/emacs won't be there (perhaps the problem you're fixing is that /usr isn't mounting), but you can nearly always count on /bin/vi being available: if you can…
> if you're SSHing into a server to fix a problem, it's possible that /usr/bin/emacs won't be there You don't need emacs on a server. TRAMP is built-in and can open remote files in a local instance over SSH, SMB, FTP, ADB, or docker/podman.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I started learning vi around the same time, but in my case (since I was expecting to work on Unix systems for decades, which has proven true) it was "because it'll always be there." I.e. if you're SSHing into a server to fix a problem, it's possible that /usr/bin/emacs won't be there (perhaps the problem you're fixing is that /usr isn't mounting), but you can nearly always count on /bin/vi being available: if you can…
> if you're SSHing into a server to fix a problem, it's possible that /usr/bin/emacs won't be there You don't need emacs on a server. TRAMP is built-in and can open remote files in a local instance over SSH, SMB, FTP, ADB, or docker/podman.
EDIT: Found http://www.fifi.org/doc/tramp/tramp-emacs.html which mentions that TRAMP started development in November 1998. I would have been getting that advice in late 1997 or early 1998, given when I started my Unix class at college. So the answer appears to be that the advice was actually correct at the time, but superseded sooner than I thought it was.
Interesting the history is varied for such a simple tool. I am but a lowly mouse/GUI user so rarely have to dwell in a shell, but I learnt the basics of vi in my 1st year of university and never forgotten. Gotten me out of many a pickle being able to reliably edit a file quickly.