• JGrffn@lemmy.world
    0·
    2 years ago

    Serious question. Why? No, for real, why? Why are these hard to understand editors still the default on most distros and flavors? Why haven’t they reinvented themselves with easier to understand shortcuts?

    I get the feeling my comment will attract heat, but I’m a web dev, studied comp Sci for years, have worked for nearly a decade and have spent over half my 30 year old life using computers of all sorts. I’m by no means a genius and I by no means know enough about this or most tech subjects, but I literally only knew how to close vim with and without saving changes in a recent vim encounter, purely due to a meme I saw in this community a few days prior, and I had already forgotten the commands by the time I saw this post. Nothing about vim and alternatives feels intuitive or easy to use, and you may say it’s a matter of sitting down and learning, which you can argue that, but you can’t argue this isn’t a bit of a gatekeeper for people trying to dip their toes into anything that could eventually rely on opening vim to do something.

    I won’t try to deny its place in computer history, or its use for many, or even that it is preferred by some, but when every other software with keyboard shortcuts agrees on certain easy to remember standards, I don’t quite understand how software that goes against all of that hasn’t been replaced or hasn’t reinvented itself in newer versions.

    Then again, I have no idea what the difference between vi, vim, emacs, and nano are, so roast away!

      • lars@lemmy.sdf.org
        0·
        2 years ago

        :x was a gamechanger. And it doesn’t update the file’s modify date if you made no changes.

        Sometimes I just sit back and think about all that saved time and effort so much that I have actually lost time by switching from :wq.

  • aard@kyu.de
    0·
    2 years ago

    I always get annoyed when I’m on some system and nano pops up and I need to figure out how to kill that thing.

      • aard@kyu.de
        0·
        2 years ago

        It shows a message which wastes valuable screen estate, especially on low resolution terminals, containing a message I have to read every single time because the keys are not in muscle memory, and never will because the bindings are stupid.

        On systems I have control over the reaction to nano popping up is exiting, removing it, making sure the package system blocks reinstallation attempts, and go back to what I was initially doing in a sane editor.

        • nixcamic@lemmy.world
          0·
          2 years ago

          My man, most of us aren’t connecting to our mainframes on VT20s these days. Even on my phone screen the three extra lines nano takes over vi aren’t a problem.

          Also if you have the time to go through all that you have the time to learn ctrl+x.