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After years of attempting and failing hard to grasp Vim or Emacs, I've recently switched to nano and I'm very happy with it. Vim and Emacs seem impenetrable to
by somethingsimple 10y ago
After years of attempting and failing hard to grasp Vim or Emacs, I've recently switched to nano and I'm very happy with it.
Vim and Emacs seem impenetrable to someone coming to them after they've been around for so long. Documentation and code is scattered all around, their concepts are not intuitive and there's so much stuff (modules, modes, whatever) available for both that I just feel paralyzed trying to decide what I need and what I don't. And then there's learning all the crazy key combinations and commands.
In contrast, the manpage for nanorc can be read in a few minutes. Keys work as expected and there's a helpful menu at the bottom. Shortcuts are all Ctrl+<something>. It's small, it's fast, and it does what I expect it to do: allow me to painlessly edit text files.
- rhabarba 10y agoProbably I'm just the wrong type of person for nano then. I'm rather happy with Emacs (even with its mediocre performance).
- Retra 10y agoI use Vim all the time, and I don't know how to do squat in it. Press `a` start typing, `:wq!` when done. ... Ok, that's a lie. I also know /, n, N, :noh for searching , dd to delete lines, and [{, ]} for jumping to delimiters.
- somethingsimple 10y agoThat's as much as I know of vim, and I can do those same things in nano :)
- cdmckay 10y agoI think 'a' is actually append. I think 'i' (for insert) is the correct way to start typing.
- marklgr 10y ago> Documentation and code is scattered all around Vim and Emacs both have excellent built-in manuals.