Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

GNU nano is my editor of choice (2021)

ariadne.space

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

191–200 of 303 posts

Re: GNU nano is my editor of choice (2021)

#191

Post by vvillena »

Havoc wrote: post #58

For people picking up linux for the first time that initial impression is crucial. Dropping people like that into an editor that requires you to somehow know ":q!" is the answer is utterly insane. Same with beginner tutorials using vi. It's straight up bad for linux adoption even if technically superior. Anyone that is a vi fan likely has the skillset to install it themselves - the reverse is not always true.

Furthermore, even easy Vim ("vim -y", "evim") requires users to know to press Control+Q to exit.

That cute bottom bar is the reason Nano wins. It provides a safety net.

Re: GNU nano is my editor of choice (2021)

#192

Post by _Algernon_ »

lynx23 wrote: post #92
latency-guy2 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When people don't know what ^X means - it's Linux, most tools are very specific of flags and the order in which you put them on the command line. So is nano saying - SHIFT-[6](^)-SHIFT-X - SHIFT-[6](^)-x - CTRL-[6](^)-SHIFT-X - CTRL-[6](^)-x All I see is '^X', on my keyboard '^' is on 6. Why the hell isn't this working? Little does little Sally know that this is a UNIXism, carat means 'CTRL', X is really just 'x' - b…

Is there a particular reason why you seem to imply that little knowledge == female? Sometimes the meme of "we need to mention girls more" works in unexpected directions if people are not careful.

If gender of hypothetical example persons is selected at random you'd expect a 50/50 ratio. Perhaps this example just happens to fall into the 50% that happen to be female?

There is no reason to assume the worst. It only detracts from the discussion.

Re: GNU nano is my editor of choice (2021)

#193

Post by smarkov »

palata wrote: post #166
smarkov wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Ok, so let's say I write a video game. Should my game have reasonable defaults, or should it ask you to go to your system-wide settings and setup all the bindings for my game? Note that I specifically mentioned text. We've all agreed on how to write text, we've all agreed on how to read text, why can't we all agree on how we edit text? Text is a universal standard, games are not. Your game can have whatever keybind…

> why can't we all agree on how we edit text? Because there are some extremely different ways of editing text out there. As you mention, vim and emacs are extremely different from Word, though extremely popular. There are certainly many more examples, but I believe those 3 are enough to say that we most definitely have not all agreed on how to edit text.

> Because there are some extremely different ways of editing text out there.

Key word here being _different_. Different should not be the default. That does not mean we should all be forced to edit text the same way, it just means that the most widely used way of editing text should be the default.

For the most part we have agreed on what the standard way of editing text is in GUI's. nano has its quirks but at least it follows the most widely accepted standard - if you're inside a text editor and start typing text, the text gets appended and magical things happen to your text only after you press a combination of keys.

Re: GNU nano is my editor of choice (2021)

#194

Post by npteljes »

sfx77 wrote: post #14

All of the old editors are horrible. Nano, vi, emacs... sure they might be conveniently placed, but are a pain to learn. This one is a vast improvement https://micro-editor.github.io/

I agree with you. The first UI I used on a computer was Volkov Commander, and maybe so, I'm really partial to mc and mcedit. Nano is tolerable, but vim, emacs are just so alien that I'll never touch them.

Re: GNU nano is my editor of choice (2021)

#195

Post by eimrine »

Aperocky wrote: post #123
p-e-w wrote: post #39

There is a very simple, end-of-discussion type argument why shipping Vim as the default editor is a terrible idea: Because its user interface differs significantly from how every other program on the system works. You can have all kinds of fruitful or fruitless debates about whether there is some deeper sense in which Vim is a "superior" editor, but there is no sensible reason for it to be the default, ever. Conventi…

You don't have to learn vim to craft a git message, most people where I work only know how to exit and they are perfectly fine using vim here or there as prompted. If someone were to learn to use CLI to begin with, I don't mind sprinkling them with some vi. It's UX for those who are already doing CLI, not some people lingering on GUI. Though it's not surprising that someone who believe vim has no benefit whatsoever o…

How about touchtyping some code in your favourite language but not in linear way? Edit one line here, delete 2 lines there, use some regexp, etc.

Re: GNU nano is my editor of choice (2021)

#196

Post by chrisoverzero »

chongli wrote: post #168
p-e-w wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ed is indeed a good choice for a line editor. We're not talking about line editors, though, but about text editors. Ed is not useful for writing, because it does not have the immediate visual feedback when entering text that even mechanical typewriters have. For that, you need a text editor, and between Vim and Nano, only one behaves like most Unix software developed in the past three decades.

Ed is not useful for writing, because it does not have the immediate visual feedback when entering text that even mechanical typewriters have. What do you mean? $ ed i Ed is indeed a good choice for a line editor. We're not talking about line editors, though, but about text editors. Ed is not useful for writing, because it does not have the immediate visual feedback when entering text that even mechanical typewriters…

Here’s the claim:

> [ed] does not have the immediate visual feedback when entering text that even mechanical typewriters have.

…and here’s the counterclaim:

    .s/does not have/does have/g
    p
See how you had to type another command to see the results of this substitution? I don’t think this demonstrates what you want it to.

Re: GNU nano is my editor of choice (2021)

#197

Post by Aperocky »

_Algernon_ wrote: post #183
Aperocky wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like I said, there's no convincing you. On previous tens of discussion surely someone has came up with something, only for you to dismiss it as gimmicky. I am not going to spend much effort on a lost cause, but quick googling came up with this blog: https://eli-rodriguez.com/en/posts/modal-editing-the-superio... Enjoy moving your cursor around when you edit text, but welcome to the club if I am wrong and you can be c…

Making a claim followed by only providing anecdotes in support just to then immediately hiding behind the "there's no convincing you"... Impressive.

Please read the entire the comment chain, the burden of proof is set arbitrarily high, which was suspected from the beginning due to the comment that was initially replied to, hence "no convincing you".

This is made especially difficult by the subjective nature of discussion.

Re: GNU nano is my editor of choice (2021)

#198

Post by danaris »

tom_ wrote: post #116
arnvidr wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>you'd have to jump to the beginning or the end of the line first, then hit Ctrl-k. This is not correct, ctrl+k works anywhere on the line?

It deletes to end of line.

Just tested in GNU nano, version 3.2, the default on Debian Buster, with default settings. Ctrl-K deletes entire line no matter where in the line you use it.

Re: GNU nano is my editor of choice (2021)

#199

Post by virtualritz »

elsjaako wrote: post #87
p-e-w wrote: post #39

There is a very simple, end-of-discussion type argument why shipping Vim as the default editor is a terrible idea: Because its user interface differs significantly from how every other program on the system works. You can have all kinds of fruitful or fruitless debates about whether there is some deeper sense in which Vim is a "superior" editor, but there is no sensible reason for it to be the default, ever. Conventi…

I'm an enthousiastic vim user. I think everyone who spends a lot if time editing text and who doesn't use vim (or similar) is probably missing out (including the author of this article). I think vim is really good. But I 100% agree that vim is a stupid default. In almost every context it's going to confuse more people than it makes happy.

> [...] everyone [...] who doesn't use vim (or similar) is probably missing out (including the author of this article)

Did you read the article? The author used both emacs and vim. Quote:

"I don’t like either of them, for differing reasons: modal editing doesn’t really fit my mental model of how an editor should work, [...]"

I don't get how people who like modal editing can't accept that other people don't.

From my experience with editor debates this weirdly seems to be much more common than the reverse.

De gustibus non est disputandum.

Re: GNU nano is my editor of choice (2021)

#200

Post by Aperocky »

_Algernon_ wrote: post #188
Aperocky wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does any such academic study exist for any editor comparison? Since according to you these are "literally the job of people" and "standard UX research stuff". This seems like a classic case of setting the bar arbitrarily high to stifle discussion - I cannot find any, but would love to be proven wrong.

> Does any such academic study exist for any editor comparison? I don't know, you tell me. You're making the claim that one is superior. The burden of proof is on you.

The burden of proof is not infinite.

Asking specifically to a level of proof that does not exist either way on a subject that does not pertains to such a level of proof is merely stifling discussion, not to mention that the claim that the editors are equal in capability are not immediately obvious and proof absolving.

Post reply on HN