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My wife was unimpressed by Vim
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this post was submitted on 08 Apr 2024
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I refuse to see how vim and emacs is worth learning. I only use it because that's the only option when editing server files. Beyond this, I couldn't imagine coding in these environments from scratch.
By the way, for editing server files consider nano. It's also widely available, has simpler shortcuts and displays them on the screen. It's obviously not powerful like vim, but a good match when you just need to edit a config file.
Nano is just as fiddly as vim and way less powerful when you actually figure out what you're doing though?
Ie a completely redundant piece of software that has no place being pre-installed anywhere
how is it just as fiddly as vim? it's the only one that's even half intuitive
Where "intuitive" means "shows important shortcuts on the bottom of the screen".
It's sufficient as a basic text editor, in the sense that it allows me to edit
configuration.nixto include helix (a couple of years ago, nvim) without having to learn it because the commands to save and quit are, as said, displayed on the bottom of the screen. That's about the extent of nano's feature set, anyway, it's a text editor, and a simple one as that, doesn't even try to be a code editor.When it comes to actually being intuitive though I vastly prefer the old DOS-style editors. The editor that shipped with it, as well as the likes of Turbo Pascal. "Press and release alt to get to the menu bar" type of interface: It allows you to have an at least half-way adequate feature set without requiring people to learn shortcuts. If Turbo Pascal displayed all its functions and their shortcuts at the bottom it'd take up more than half of the screen.
Really, "intuitive" when it comes to UI generally means "dumbed down, featureless". Once a program actually has features things quickly become complicated and it's counter-productive to keep things usable for users which aren't willing to set at least a modicum amount of time aside to learn the very basics. The Blender Fundamentals series is what two hours of video. Text editors can get away with less as the feature set isn't as broad but you should be willing to go through at least half of of the tutorial which is going to take 15 minutes or so, both for
vimtutorandhx --tutor.I just find the saving mechanism frustrating to use compared to vim's as an entry level user, and now as a mid-skilled user I dislike how featureless nano is - when I was first learning how to use the terminal I hated having to edit anything as I was pretty much force-fed nano with no alternative provided, but on finding vim and remembering literally 3 things (
:w,:qandi) everything became so much easier, but I definitely do have an extra bitter taste left about not being told about something much easier to use which irked me when I saw someone preaching how amazing nano isI also really don't get the hate for vim when remembering 3 things gives you as much/more functionality as nano and is a starting point for so much more functionality - intuitive doesn't mean featureless and don't try and pretend nano's shortcuts are the same as 99% of other editors (text or otherwise), in fact they're totally different, making it less intuitive