> The people who came up with what you call 'history' simply had no clue about it. Saying they didn't have a clue is both disingenuous to those who worked hard

> The people who came up with what you call 'history' simply had no clue about it. Saying they didn't have a clue is both disingenuous to those who worked hard on these problems and flat out wrong. These programs were written for text terminals running over links who's speed was measured in hundreds or thousands of bits per second. The UI had to be as simple and efficient as possible to enable a decent UX over such slow lines. The UI was sacrificed for the UX. Of course after networks got faster these editors weren't necessary but guess what, they were understood, worked and there by default. And they still are. I see no issue with this and learning vi is actually simple once you RTFM.