Reminds me of one of my favorite editors - wordstar 3… George R.R. Martin used it to write the great bulk of his works! We still carry around more baggage from this editor (arguably word processor) than most folks know . Sent from my iPhone > On Jul 20, 2025, at 1:35 PM, coff-request(a)tuhs.org wrote: > > Send COFF mailing list submissions to > coff(a)tuhs.org > > To subscribe or unsubscribe via email, send a message with subject or > body 'help' to > coff-request(a)tuhs.org > > You can reach the person managing the list at > coff-owner(a)tuhs.org > > When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific > than "Re: Contents of COFF digest..." > > Today's Topics: > > 1. Re: editor wars (Paul Winalski) > 2. Re: editor wars (Warner Losh) > 3. Re: editor wars (Paul Winalski) > 4. Re: editor wars (Lars Brinkhoff) > 5. Re: editor wars (Lars Brinkhoff) > 6. Re: editor wars (Paul Winalski) > > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > > Message: 1 > Date: Sun, 20 Jul 2025 11:43:10 -0400 > From: Paul Winalski <paul.winalski(a)gmail.com> > Subject: [COFF] Re: editor wars > To: coff(a)tuhs.org > Message-ID: > <CABH=_VSdx+ySq5VKrRY5d-dzdVfQ1PgBh0J4A4mFS+t-R0MX1w(a)mail.gmail.com> > Content-Type: multipart/alternative; > boundary="000000000000095b69063a5e382b" > >> On Sun, Jul 20, 2025 at 10:02 AM Will Senn <will.senn(a)gmail.com> wrote: >> >> I remember having discussions about vi vs emacs in the mid 1990's. I'm >> curious if those were the first public wars about editors, or if y'all >> remember earlier flamewars on the subject? >> > > I recall the editor flame wars going on in the Usenet and ARPAnet world > during the 1980s. Mainly in the Human Factors Usenet group. Within DEC's > software engineering groups the debate (not a flame war) was between TECO > and EDT. > > 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. > > Then came the tragic day when AOL started carrying Usenet newsgroups. I > say tragic because there was a major culture clash between the AOL user > community and the Usenet community. Usenet messages were propagated for > the most part over low-speed dial-up connections between the various > servers. Terseness and brevity were therefore highly valued. AOl, on the > other hand, had centralized servers and, since they charged their customers > based on connect time, encouraged verbosity and garrulous writing style. > > So Pournelle got Usenet access. His professional scientific training was > in operations research and human factors, so it wasn't long before he > discovered the Human Factors Usenet group. The HF group was in the middle > of a particularly viscous vi vs. emacs flame war at the time. Pournelle > stuck his nose in and posted that his editor of preference was Electric > Pencil. This triggered a discussion about Pournelle, along the lines of: > "Who is this bozo?" "He's Jerry Pournelle, the lousy SF writer who thinks > he knows something about computers." Both sides of the editor flame war > dropped their differences and started flaming Pournelle. I don't recall > ever seeing Pournelle post on Usenet again. > > -Paul W. >