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

71–80 of 303 posts

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

#71

Post by moffkalast »

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…

There are two types of linux developers, those who use nano and those who haven't yet figured out how to quit vim.

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

#72

Post by zimpenfish »

fifilura wrote: post #6
tristanbvk wrote: post #2

I used to be a nano user but now whenever I want to use a terminal text editor I will almost always use micro as it has built in support for most languages. https://micro-editor.github.io/

I got stuck with jed https://www.jedsoft.org/jed/ as my terminal editor after getting too used to the emacs shortcuts but when emacs -nw became too heavy. Does anyone else use this? (To be fair I am transitioning to vim now that my emacs muscle memory is waning, and the rate of jed bugfixes likewise).

I had a period where I was using jed because I was doing stuff with s-lang (mostly Lynx) and using slrn to read news. But then I drifted into the vi/vims because trying to get jed installed everywhere was a pain.

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

#73

Post by palata »

dijit wrote: post #5

There was a time (2006?) when I was getting into linux. 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…

> We have a less powerful tool because we want to attract newbies

That's exactly it. The modern metrics for anything to be successful is the number of people using it, even if they are completely useless because they did not put any effort into learning the basics. In this case, it would be essentially "ESC", "i" and ":wq". But that's waaaay too hard.

No wonder everybody ships a full rootfs in a container for every single executable they make... if learning how to quit vim is too hard, who would want to learn about packaging?

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

#74

Post by delta_p_delta_x »

hulitu wrote: post #21
anonyme-honteux wrote: post #4

Using those kind of Unix tools is like having a time travel machine to understand what kind of mistakes you should never do when Iyou design a software. Not having system wide keyboard shortcuts is one of them: vim, emacs, nano etc all have a different shortcut to quit the app Worse still, every software invents his own configuration format. Thinking that being ultra configurable is a good excuse for not doing the ri…

> Not having system wide keyboard shortcuts is one of them: vim, emacs, nano etc all have a different shortcut to quit the app Not even Microsoft has system wide keyboard shortcuts. And copy paste on Microsoft has become a game of luck.

> Not even Microsoft has system wide keyboard shortcuts

Huh? I've used all versions of Windows from 98 onwards, and things like Ctrl-Y/X/C/V/Z, Alt-F4, Alt-Tab, Ctrl-Alt-Del, etc have all worked extremely reliably.

The one exception is the keyboard shortcut for 'redo', which some applications like to bind to Ctrl-Y, and some others like to bind to Shift-Ctrl-Z.

Sure, later versions of Windows have added additional shortcuts like Win-Tab, Win-V (for clipboard history), Shift-Win-S (quick screenshot), Win-X (superuser menu, since Windows 8), but these are absolutely welcome additions.

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

#75

Post by moffkalast »

europeanguy wrote: post #9
anonyme-honteux wrote: post #4

Using those kind of Unix tools is like having a time travel machine to understand what kind of mistakes you should never do when Iyou design a software. Not having system wide keyboard shortcuts is one of them: vim, emacs, nano etc all have a different shortcut to quit the app Worse still, every software invents his own configuration format. Thinking that being ultra configurable is a good excuse for not doing the ri…

On the other hand, having system wide keyboard shortcuts will almost certainly impose unwanted constraints on how an app can behave.

Exactly, that's the whole damn point. It's to constrain those app devs from making stupid UI choices.

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

#76

Post by yakshaving_jgt »

tobbob wrote: post #31

I've never seen the point in spending time and effort learning and memorising a bunch of vim commands. If I need to do more than simple edits to a file, I'll have a graphical desktop installed and use vscode. I tend to use nano if using a CLI as it's more intuitive.

I've never seen the point in spending time and effort learning and memorising a bunch of contextual menus that I need to point and click through. If I need to do more than simple edits to a file, I'll do the same thing as I would when making simple edits to a file or composing an email, I'll crack open vim and get to work.

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

#77

Post by [deleted] »

b112 wrote: post #16
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/

Wha?! Nothing matches the power of vi or emacs. Nothing. If you don't want the power, or don't need the tool, fine. I get that. But calling vi terrible, is like complaining that a sledgehammer is terrible, because you want to hang a picture, and that's all you have.

[deleted]

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

#78

Post by radicalbyte »

nkozyra wrote: post #19
dijit wrote: post #5

There was a time (2006?) when I was getting into linux. 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…

> 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 Perhaps, but your experience sounds like a good blueprint for what new terminal users might want. Start with nano move to more powerful tools when you need them.

Windows ships with Notepad, which is fine for 99.9% of users.

Those who need more know how to install Notepad++, UltraEdit or Sublime.

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

#80

Post by latency-guy2 »

forgotpwd16 wrote: post #37
lynx23 wrote: post #26

Nano is the first thing I apt remove upon installing a new Debian box. Yes, I could use update-alternatives to make it non-default, but better uninstall the damn thing so that nobody can hurt themselves...

How do you even hurt yourself with something that has on-screen help?

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' - but how would Sally know? Sally was just trying to do a simple git commit to get used to using Linux in the first place. Is it little Sally's fault for not knowing? No! Will little Sally have a bad taste in her mouth due to using an unfamiliar tool? Yes. And there you go, little Sally has went on back to Windows. -1 user.

Post reply on HN