4 ms·

> Your choice of text editor is a serious matter. No, it's not. It really doesn't matter at all what editor you use. And there are so many to choose from. You

> Your choice of text editor is a serious matter. No, it's not. It really doesn't matter at all what editor you use. And there are so many to choose from. You don't even need to stick to only one editor. I sure as hell don't. Editor loyalty is tribalism, and tribalism is myopic. Use whatever tool gets the damn job done, and learn a few of them so that you at least know what's possible.

j4yav 3y ago
What you're saying is true, but for context the article is an old April fool's joke. Not sure why it was posted today.
ska 3y ago
check the publication date.
- maccard 3y ago
  2018? Maybe in 1998.
  - ska 3y ago
    April 1st.
bluGill 3y ago
Editor loyalty is more than tribalism. The more/better you know your editor, the quicker you can make some complex edits of the type that editor enables. Of course some editors are more limiting than others, so you can master notepad in an a short time - though it probably isn't worth the bother even though it can insert the date/time into your document (as I just discovered while writing this), the limited functions means if you need that feature you should already be using a different editor that provides other features it doesn't. However be careful. Editors do offer different features. Some things really are easier/better in a different editor, thus even after you settled on an editor you should - every few years - take a look around to see if maybe something else is enough better in some way as to be worth learning in depth. While sometimes it seems like the wrong choice will get the other tribe to kill you (or condemn you to hell for eternity), I'm not aware of that ever happening - generally you can remain friends with other people after switching.
Hasz 3y ago
Use whatever get the job done. It's fine to use Vscode, but it's nice to know emacs/vim/nano, it's very nice to know ed/vi, but it's really nice to not have to use echo.
tempodox 3y ago
You are in error, ed(1) is the standard Unix text editor. But seriously, you fell for an April Fools' joke.
fnordpiglet 3y ago
There was a time that ed was necessary knowledge because you often had richer editors installed on a different partition from the boot partition and more frequently than you would expect you ended up in a position where you were only able to bring up the boot partition or had to boot emergency media, both of which only had ed. That wasn’t a preference thing, it was a necessity thing. Trying to learn how to use ed when production is down (and you might not have a readily available command window with man pages available when you’re in a data center on a vt220 plugged into the dead system!)

j4yav 3y ago

What you're saying is true, but for context the article is an old April fool's joke. Not sure why it was posted today.

ska 3y ago

check the publication date.

maccard 3y ago
2018? Maybe in 1998.
- ska 3y ago
  April 1st.

bluGill 3y ago

Editor loyalty is more than tribalism. The more/better you know your editor, the quicker you can make some complex edits of the type that editor enables. Of course some editors are more limiting than others, so you can master notepad in an a short time - though it probably isn't worth the bother even though it can insert the date/time into your document (as I just discovered while writing this), the limited functions means if you need that feature you should already be using a different editor that provides other features it doesn't. However be careful. Editors do offer different features. Some things really are easier/better in a different editor, thus even after you settled on an editor you should - every few years - take a look around to see if maybe something else is enough better in some way as to be worth learning in depth. While sometimes it seems like the wrong choice will get the other tribe to kill you (or condemn you to hell for eternity), I'm not aware of that ever happening - generally you can remain friends with other people after switching.

Hasz 3y ago

Use whatever get the job done. It's fine to use Vscode, but it's nice to know emacs/vim/nano, it's very nice to know ed/vi, but it's really nice to not have to use echo.

tempodox 3y ago

You are in error, ed(1) is the standard Unix text editor. But seriously, you fell for an April Fools' joke.

fnordpiglet 3y ago

There was a time that ed was necessary knowledge because you often had richer editors installed on a different partition from the boot partition and more frequently than you would expect you ended up in a position where you were only able to bring up the boot partition or had to boot emergency media, both of which only had ed. That wasn’t a preference thing, it was a necessity thing. Trying to learn how to use ed when production is down (and you might not have a readily available command window with man pages available when you’re in a data center on a vt220 plugged into the dead system!)