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GNU nano is my editor of choice (2021)

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

#81

Post by forgotpwd16 »

pfoof wrote: post #67
DemocracyFTW2 wrote: post #22

Highly reminiscent of #378: * nano? Real Programmers use emacs. * Hey. Real Programmers use vim. * Well, Real Programmers use ed. * No, Real Programmers use cat. * Real Programmers use a magnetized needle and a steady hand. * Excuse me, but Real Programmers use butterflies. They open their hands and let the delicate wings flap once. The disturbances ripple outward, changing the flow of the eddy currents in the upper…

How can you even use cat to write? I understand dd or echo, but cat by itself? Cat /dev/whatever and a steady hand?

  $ cat  test
  > this is a test text file
  > written with cat
  > EOF
  $ cat > test
  > this is an extra line at the end
  > EOF
  $ cat test
  this is a test text file
  written with cat
  this is an extra line at the end
But not sure how you modify them. An option will be using other tools but that makes cat incapable of being a text editor.

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

#82

Post by p-e-w »

tomxor wrote: post #64
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…

Yup, I have a bunch of vim bindings to give it standard text editing behaviour because it's just too hard to kick muscle memory when you are exposed to it every day through every GUI text field's common behaviour. Jumping between vim and these makes it even harder. I'm talking shift+arrow, ctrl+arrow, ctrl+c, ctrl+v... I know how to do it the vim way and often do, but when you jumping between vim and the rest of the…

> Unfortunately a significant chunk of what is "intuitive" is about familiarity which in turn can be more to do with commonality.

Of course, and I don't see anything unfortunate about it. Pressing buttons to make pixels on a screen change isn't a natural activity, it's a learned one. And commonality simply means there is less to learn before one can become productive, which is 100% a good thing.

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

#83

Post by [deleted] »

wongarsu wrote: post #23
hulitu wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

alt+f4, ctrl+s, ctrl+x/c/v, ctrl+z, ctrl+p all work near universally on windows. Up until Windows XP that was also true for F1, but shipping help files somehow got out of fashion. Of course there are exceptions, like conhost, but generally you don't have to think about how to save or quit something on windows

[deleted]

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

#84

Post by yakshaving_jgt »

Perhaps it's confirmation bias, but it seems like quite a few vim/emacs/nano discussions have appeared on HN recently (more so than usual), with much of the commentary being along the lines of "Yeah I had a look at vim, but I don't see the point."

What drives people to make comments like this? Why not either put in the work to understand the point, or just move along?

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

#85

Post by palata »

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…

Right. So everyone should use system-wide keyboard shortcuts. Preferably your favourites, right? At least they should work well for your favourite window manager, I suppose? Because those who like different shortcuts and different window managers are weird and don't understand UX. /s

My preference is to start with a minimalistic system that works on most platforms, and where I can install what I want. If I wanted a system with "sane defaults from someone else's point of view" and working only on a handful of platforms, I would use macOS.

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

#86

Post by rich_sasha »

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.

Vim seems to suggest that when by muscle memory i try "C-x C-q" (emacs exit).

But the whole modality thing is insane for a newbie; vim is a fine editor as a conscious choice of course.

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

#87

Post by elsjaako »

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.

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

#88

Post by Cockbrand »

pfoof wrote: post #67
DemocracyFTW2 wrote: post #22

Highly reminiscent of #378: * nano? Real Programmers use emacs. * Hey. Real Programmers use vim. * Well, Real Programmers use ed. * No, Real Programmers use cat. * Real Programmers use a magnetized needle and a steady hand. * Excuse me, but Real Programmers use butterflies. They open their hands and let the delicate wings flap once. The disturbances ripple outward, changing the flow of the eddy currents in the upper…

How can you even use cat to write? I understand dd or echo, but cat by itself? Cat /dev/whatever and a steady hand?

   cat > myfile.txt
Then type away, finishing by hitting CTRL+D on a single line.

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

#89

Post by dijit »

deaddodo wrote: post #33
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. I’ve never used a distribution that includes nano, but not also some variety of vi and/or emacs. And there’s no “favorite”/“default” binding in terminal. There are defaults in the GUI, however those are almost exclusively Kate or gEdit. And new users probably use those far more frequently as their first editor. The only qualifier I can figure for nano…

visudo opens nano on most distributions (ubuntu, debian) despite the name being visudo.

whatever the root users $EDITOR variable is set to (and any subsequent created user) is the default.

vi/vim wasn't even installed last time I installed ubuntu minimal: but nano was.

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