5 Nov
2022
5 Nov
'22
1:45 a.m.
On Fri, 4 Nov 2022, Theodore Ts'o wrote:
Yeah, same here, although my start was with the editor
that came with
the PDP-8 disk operating system (using an ASR-35), the PDP-15's
foreground/background system (using a KSR-33), and the PDP-11's RT-11
running under TSX-plus (using VT-100's and DECwriter for the console).
I started off with TECO on RT-11; talk about cryptic...
So when I finally got a chance to use Unix when I got
to college,
/bin/ed was so similar to the line oriented editors I had used on the
various Digital systems I had a chance to use while growing up and in
high school, I never bothered to use vi. It was either ed or emacs,
depending on how loaded the time-sharing systems I was using in my
freshman year.
Shortly after I switched to "ed" on the 11/40 someone brought out "em"
(editor for mortals) which was sort of a screen editor: I recall saying
"what a stupid command name" as it was only a fumble away from "rm"
:-(
Of course, once I had a chance to use a Vaxstation or
the IBM PC/RT all
to myself, I jumped over to emacs and never looked back --- except when
I was recovering a system in single user mode, of course.
A boss of mine insisted that everyone had to learned "ed", because after a
system crash it might be the only editor available; that, or having to
dial in over a slow modem.
-- Dave