4 ms·
Wow. "Able to edit files and save changes to the disk" is the absolute minimum for something to count as a text editor...and that's not even reliable?
by LambdaComplex 9y ago
Wow. "Able to edit files and save changes to the disk" is the absolute minimum for something to count as a text editor...and that's not even reliable?
- morganvachon 9y agoIt wasn't reliable back then, but that was nearly ten years ago. I'm sure it's improved since then. And honestly, it could have been just one regression that was soon fixed, but I had already moved on and I generally don't look back when something like that happens.
- colanderman 9y agoRight – "fixed the bug that ate my files" isn't good enough. I need to feel confident that the next version of the software won't introduce another similar bug. The best "protection" I've seen in this space is to log all changes to the edited document, through a simple (and therefore easy to prove correct) code path. The only editor I've ever seen do this was a Xilinx schematic editor. The editor crashed all the time, but I never lost work, since on restart, the editor simply replayed what it had in its log. (This was fun to watch!) Of course this method isn't foolproof, but it went a long way making me feel confident my work wouldn't be lost.
- colanderman 9y agoI once wrote a script to periodically back up the text contents of my terminals, JOE 2.x crashed so frequently (losing my work). JOE 3.x crashes less frequently, and I can tell when it's about to (block-selecting starts acting up), but it's unpredictable enough that I could in no way describe how to reproduce it in a bug report, and I often don't have cores enabled on the machines I'm working on. I love love love the interface, which keeps me on it, but I've been bitten enough to lose trust that I won't get bitten in the future.