5 ms·

If you look at how other (console) programs on the system work, Vi(m) is more consistent than Nano. ed, sed, awk, readline, even perl... knowing one of them, yo

by dig1 4y ago

If you look at how other (console) programs on the system work, Vi(m) is more consistent than Nano. ed, sed, awk, readline, even perl... knowing one of them, you know how to use vi. Likewise, know vi, you know how to use most of these tools (sans visual/modal editing abstraction). Also, it follows the Unix spirit of making small programs (in Vi(m) it can be seen as "a small number of key presses") and composing them for more complex actions. In Vi(m), almost everything is composable with everything: jumping to the line, deleting line ranges, joining ranges, etc. In Nano (and in Emacs), you end up with tons of Ctrl-keyX-keyB-keyC presses or cursor movements. Example: delete a line - you'd have to jump to the beginning or the end of the line first, then hit Ctrl-k. In vi, it is just "dd", no matter where your cursor is. Or, delete 5 lines from the beginning with vi: "gg5dd". Not sure how you can get more unixy than that ;)

CJefferson 4y ago
Nowadays, most people are going to know the standard Mac/windows GUI shortcuts before they touch a command line. In my experience, many student's first experience of a command line editor is "git commit", or a similar command, which springs the default editor on them. Learning vim because it just popped up as the default editor is almost impossible.
arnvidr 4y ago
>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?
- tom_ 4y ago
  It deletes to end of line.
  - danaris 4y ago
    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.
    - rascul 4y ago
      It's cutfromcursor in nanorc if you want the other behavior. https://nano-editor.org/dist/latest/nanorc.5.html https://nano-editor.org/dist/latest/nanorc.5.html
    - Kerbonut 4y ago
      I believe ctrl+k cuts the line. ctrl+u pastes the line, yea?
      - danaris 4y ago
        Well, yes. I was just matching the wording of the comment I was replying to.
p-e-w 4y ago
The so-called "Unix spirit" is itself a rather hilarious mistake from the early days of software engineering, when programmers knew essentially nothing about human/computer interaction and foolishly believed that "efficiency" in a mathematical sense translates to efficient workflows. It took many decades of trial and error to overcome this dogma, but today's productivity software all features a massive amount of functionality integration, not functionality separation. Email and calendars are often used together, that's why they belong in the same program. Similarly, it makes sense for a programmer's editor to have an integrated terminal, and for a web browser to have an integrated bookmark manager. "Small programs" is a bad idea that happens to sound like a good one. We don't really need to debate this, as reality has settled that debate long ago. Software serves people, not ideals of rational optimality. And default software must serve the greatest possible number of people well, else it's the wrong default.
- Hendrikto 4y ago
  Integration does not presuppose hard coupling. Different components can integrate and coordinate through standards. I would argue that having one big app is the one of the worst methods of integration.
  - p-e-w 4y ago
    > Different components can integrate and coordinate through standards. We've tried that and for the most part, it doesn't actually work in practice. Hell, it doesn't even work between standard Unix programs. They don't "integrate and coordinate" at all. They just push unstructured text around, and in some cases that's sufficient to perform some very basic compound tasks. There is an upcoming project though that tries to make Unix pipelines work the way they are supposed to: Nushell[1]. It has real composability with strongly typed data that flows between commands. Guess how they're doing it? Yup, that's right: They're building it all as a monolithic system where the entire pipeline is supervised and interpreted by the shell. Unix is too fragmented and standards are too difficult to develop and implement for any other approach to be realistically feasible. "Small programs" are an evolutionary dead end. [1] https://www.nushell.sh/ https://www.nushell.sh/
- 4y ago
throwaway9870 4y ago
Beginners don't care about deleting a line, you can press DEL 80 times and get it done. They care about quickly typing something in or changing a config, saving and quitting. Easy to instruct with Nano without having to introduce the concept of mode editing, which is totally foreign to most beginners.

by dig1 4y ago

CJefferson 4y ago

Nowadays, most people are going to know the standard Mac/windows GUI shortcuts before they touch a command line. In my experience, many student's first experience of a command line editor is "git commit", or a similar command, which springs the default editor on them. Learning vim because it just popped up as the default editor is almost impossible.

arnvidr 4y ago

>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?

tom_ 4y ago
It deletes to end of line.
- danaris 4y ago
  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.
  - rascul 4y ago
    It's cutfromcursor in nanorc if you want the other behavior. https://nano-editor.org/dist/latest/nanorc.5.html https://nano-editor.org/dist/latest/nanorc.5.html
  - Kerbonut 4y ago
    I believe ctrl+k cuts the line. ctrl+u pastes the line, yea?
    - danaris 4y ago
      Well, yes. I was just matching the wording of the comment I was replying to.

p-e-w 4y ago

The so-called "Unix spirit" is itself a rather hilarious mistake from the early days of software engineering, when programmers knew essentially nothing about human/computer interaction and foolishly believed that "efficiency" in a mathematical sense translates to efficient workflows. It took many decades of trial and error to overcome this dogma, but today's productivity software all features a massive amount of functionality integration, not functionality separation. Email and calendars are often used together, that's why they belong in the same program. Similarly, it makes sense for a programmer's editor to have an integrated terminal, and for a web browser to have an integrated bookmark manager. "Small programs" is a bad idea that happens to sound like a good one. We don't really need to debate this, as reality has settled that debate long ago. Software serves people, not ideals of rational optimality. And default software must serve the greatest possible number of people well, else it's the wrong default.

Hendrikto 4y ago
Integration does not presuppose hard coupling. Different components can integrate and coordinate through standards. I would argue that having one big app is the one of the worst methods of integration.
- p-e-w 4y ago
  > Different components can integrate and coordinate through standards. We've tried that and for the most part, it doesn't actually work in practice. Hell, it doesn't even work between standard Unix programs. They don't "integrate and coordinate" at all. They just push unstructured text around, and in some cases that's sufficient to perform some very basic compound tasks. There is an upcoming project though that tries to make Unix pipelines work the way they are supposed to: Nushell[1]. It has real composability with strongly typed data that flows between commands. Guess how they're doing it? Yup, that's right: They're building it all as a monolithic system where the entire pipeline is supervised and interpreted by the shell. Unix is too fragmented and standards are too difficult to develop and implement for any other approach to be realistically feasible. "Small programs" are an evolutionary dead end. [1] https://www.nushell.sh/ https://www.nushell.sh/
4y ago

throwaway9870 4y ago

Beginners don't care about deleting a line, you can press DEL 80 times and get it done. They care about quickly typing something in or changing a config, saving and quitting. Easy to instruct with Nano without having to introduce the concept of mode editing, which is totally foreign to most beginners.