20 Jul
2025
20 Jul
'25
7:21 p.m.
On 2025-07-20 11:43, Paul Winalski wrote (in part):
I remember one amusing (to me) incident in the vi vs.
emacs flame wars.
Jerry Pournelle, the science fiction author, was one of the early
adopters of the home PC. He wrote a column on PCs for Byte magazine and
set himself up as a computer pundit. We professional software
engineers, who worked on "real" computers, not those feeble PC toys,
held him in polite contempt.
I recall one of his "Chaos Manor" columns about a UNIX-PC sent to him by
ATT. The first thing inside the box was a very thick licensing
agreement that he declined to sign.
I use both vi and emacs. One day, I was modifying my .emacs file with
vi -- I do not remember why. A colleague, walking by, asked what I was
doing. When I told him, he fixed me with a cold stare, said
"Scurrilous", and walked away.
S.