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From: sangria@inlink.com (Sang K. Choe)
Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.misc,comp.unix.bsd.misc,comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy,comp.os.os2.advocacy
Subject: Re: Betting on Unix
Date: Tue, 04 Mar 1997 03:03:17 GMT
Organization: InLink
Lines: 68
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On Wed, 26 Feb 1997 19:27:46 +0100, "Terje A. Bergesen"
<no.email@to.me.please> wrote:

: J Wunsch wrote:
: > 
: > "Terje A. Bergesen" <no.email@to.me.please> wrote:
: 
: [...]
: > > Ease of use doesn't nessesarily mean "easy to learn".
: > 
: > But you've been the one telling it were ``most simple''.  You might
: > attribute vi to whatever you want, but ``most simple'' is one of the
: > attributes it _doesn't_ deserve.
: 
: Most simple doesn't mean "most intuitive to a new user". I can do
: things in vi that I wouldn't even know where to look for in the
: manual vith other editors. 

Tell me, how long have you spent working with vi?  And how long have
you worked with other editors?

It's interesting that people who claim vi is "easy" are those who have
spent years cutting their teeth on it.  Whereas, these same people
will claim that other editors aren't as "easy" because they can't do
the same things with it after only a few weeks (if that long).

If you spend as many years working with a single editor/program as a
typical Unix admin does with vi, chances are good you can make that
editor/program jump through hoops as well.

I have a friend who thinks Photoshop is the most elegant program ever
written--she claims it's "drop dead easy".  She spent about three
years learning that tool.  I spent about three weeks trying to learn
that tool.  It is certainly not "drop dead easy".  I'm sure in another
two years, I'll be closer to her views, but for now--it's way, *WAY*
too complex.

: No, it is not a misconception. Yes, I have gone through the learning
: curve (together with the learning curve to UNIX) and vi has grown
: on me. It is the most powerful and easy editor I know of, and I use
: it almost exclusively, even on NT.

I'll grant you it is a very powerful editor.  But easy is still an
adjective I don't find comfortable using when referring to vi.  Vi may
seem "easy" to you (and to some extent, me as well), but it's only
after several years of working with it--don't know about you, but I
think I started messing around with vi in earnest several years ago.
 
: I will - however - admit that some more modern implemenations of
: vi, like vim, which allows you to move around with cursor keys
: and page-up/page-down when you are in insert mode, are nice
: enhancements :-)

Personally, I consider the more modern implementation the only really
useful 'vi'.  I really hated having to keep hitting ESC to toggle
between insert/append mode to command mode when moving the cursor
around.

Vim I like.  But on NT, I think Lemmy is better--it's not a console
app, but a GUIed version of elvis.  It's support for mouse inputs is
much better than the console version.

-- Sang.
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* Sang K. Choe   sangria@inlink.com                    *
*                http://sangria.inlink.com/index.html  *
*                finger:  sang@sangria.inlink.com      *
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