[COFF] Re: Kids these days....

On Wed, Feb 12, 2025 at 4:40 PM John Levine <johnl(a)taugh.com> wrote: That's rather subjective. The `ex` command set is very close to `ed`, but subtly different in (possibly?) annoying ways. As a trivial example, `q` repeated twice in `ed` will exit even if the file being edited is not saved; to do so in `ex` one uses the `vi`-like `q!`. Maybe that's splitting fine hairs, but if the desire is for a "muscle-memory" editor in a constrained environment, that kind of thing can be maddening. An issue here is that the Internet has never reached the Padlipsky ideal of resource sharing: under Plan 9, I brought all the resources I wanted to interact with to me by importing them into some namespace on my terminal (terminal in the Plan 9 sense, not the VT102 sense), where I could interact with them using familiar and comfortable tools. But that never caught on, and the rest of the world still thinks that `ssh` is a nifty idea. Since most of us live in the real world, all too often we're constrained to remote access environments and whatever tools they come with. (Ted: I get it, man; I really do.) Incidentally, for these pragmatic reasons, I've been playing with the Helix editor, and I kinda prefer it to vi/vim. Even though I don't think that character-mode interfaces are all that cool in 2025, at least I can confidently say that I have moved boldly into the 1980s. - Dan C.