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| Subject: | Re: Editing C with... |
| Group: | Openbsd-misc |
| From: | Nick Holland |
| Date: | 4 May 2008 |
> On Sat, May 03, 2008 at 07:56:33PM +0200, Jordi Espasa Clofent wrote:
>> Yes, I know, it's completely a dumb question; but I'm curious about it.
>>
>> I'm just learning C applied in networking area and I wonder what editor is
>> preferred by OpenBSD developers.
>>
>> At present moment I use vim.
>
>
> /usr/bin/vi.
I, too, go for base system tools. I'm not going to tell any OpenBSD
developer (or other skilled programmer) they are right or wrong for
using their favorite tool, but I WOULD tell any new user: learn the
base system tools first. Most modern OSs (with the exception of
Windows, assuming you wish to lump it in with that category) include
a usable editor. Fancy shit like vim can be tried AFTER you
know how to use the standards, and know what you want to work
"better" for you.
And yes, I follow that advice, I can (or could) work my way around
in the base editors of a bunch of systems. About the only one that
I finally decided was hopeless and unusable was CP/M's ed (I actually
devoted a day of my life, long after I had learned line editors from
a 1970s vintage HP mini and a Sperry Univac and many others, including
edlin), to learning "ed" well enough to enter a small program into my
computer with it. The experience was...strange. Psychedelic drugs may
have helped. It was kinda like using a screen editor..without the
screen (or a line editor on a half-duplex machine with your terminal
set to full duplex). Short version: what was on the screen had almost
nothing to do with what was in the file. The whole time, I kept
feeling like I was missing something, and I think it was the drugs.
The "well, you have to make compromises on an editor designed to run
in a system with potentially as little as 16k RAM" argument is pure
bull in this case, I have worked with several usable CP/M editors,
and ed that wasn't one of them).
In case you are wondering: all the HTML editing I do, I do in
OpenBSD's stock 'vi' (with a few macros for common HTML tags in a
.exrc file). I've on several occasions had people point out errors
I've made and say, "If you used vim, you would have seen that error".
Well, my impression of vim is it's annoyingly distracting. If I want
strange and distracting color on a screen, I'll watch kids cartoons.
It also violates several rules of mine for system editor operation,
including "it alters files in unexpected ways", which I consider a
major sin. Yes, I know, you can turn off all that crap, but if I'm
trying to configure or administer a system, my first goal is not to
spend an hour "moving in"...make the changes needed, and move on,
and NOT fix the editor.
Nick.
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