Nano has already supplanted the great EMacs and Vim as the most popular text editor of all linux distros, for though it has many omissions in functionality it scores over the older, more complete programs in two important respects. First, it is slightly simpler; and secondly it has the text “^ Exit” inscribed in highlighted text on its footer

EDIT : This sees to be going over some people’s heads. It’s a hitchiker’s guide to the galaxy reference.

The Hitchhiker’s Guide has already supplanted the great Encyclopaedia Galactica as the standard repository of all knowledge and wisdom, for though it has many omissions . . . it scores over the older, more pedestrian work in two important respects. First, it is slightly cheaper; and secondly it has the words DON’T PANIC inscribed in large friendly letters on its cover.

  • ZoteTheMighty@lemmy.zip
    8·
    1 day ago

    Perhaps you’re right…or perhaps the Encyclopaedia Galactica is a better tool for navigating the galaxy if you’re willing to learn a trick or two about how to navigate it? No one ever argued that the Restaurant at the End of the Universe was the BEST restaurant, only that it was the one at the end.

  • rumba@lemmy.zipEnglish
    16·
    2 days ago

    Many were increasingly of the opinion that they’d all made a big mistake moving away from ‘ed’ in the first place, and some said that even ‘ed’ had been a bad move, and that no-one should ever have left punch cards.

  • TaterTot@piefed.socialEnglish
    10·
    2 days ago

    I’m ashamed to admit that, despite having read Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy several times, my Vim elitist mindset made me miss the reference.

    Sometimes you need a real good slice of humble pie to remember what’s important in life.

  • burlemarx@lemmygrad.ml
    1·
    2 days ago

    I understand why. People tried using vi/vim but couldn’t figure out how to exit the app. On the other hand, with Emacs, you need to use 4 keystrokes to do anything. It does not surprise me why nano is way used by default.

  • Digit@lemmy.todayEnglish
    1·
    2 days ago

    *Ahem*

    mcedit

    under sung hero of easy tui text editors. [Has controls on screen.]

    overlooked because it’s part of mc, and thus does not show up in the text editor categories in package managers and websearches?

    could do a similar THGTTG bit for it. … or other parodies of other stuff… idk, my brain not conjuring such things with ease just now.

    (And yes, I missed the reference, at first, too… Thought about responding with some contrived towel elaboration).

  • Snot Flickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
    6·
    3 days ago

    Many were increasingly of the opinion that they’d all made a big mistake in making text editors in the first place. And some said that even making operating systems had been a bad move, and that no one should ever have built computers at all.

    • SkaveRat@discuss.tchncs.de
      6·
      3 days ago

      In the beginning, boolean algebra was invented.

      This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.

    • chonglibloodsport@lemmy.ca
      2·
      2 days ago

      Vi lets me jump to the place I need to be and make edits to a config file very sticky, simply, and efficiently. But all that came at the cost of the steep learning curve.

    • Cyno@programming.dev
      1·
      2 days ago

      Same, although I did wish I could like, just select text with my mouse properly, or move the cursor to a place by clicking there, delete blocks without cutting them, and/or remember the copy/paste/undo shortcuts…etc

    • homes@piefed.worldEnglish
      3·
      3 days ago

      That’s why nano gets used more than vi/vim. In the past, the majority of people using terminal text editors were geeks and developers. Now the majority of people using the terminal text editors are more often casual users who have no use for putting the time and effort to learn vi/vim, especially because they have no need for the extended functionality

      • chellomere@lemmy.world
        0·
        3 days ago

        I don’t get you people. Proper copy/paste support is “extended functionality”? I beg to differ. This is basic functionality.

        And no, single line copy/paste as offered by nano, or copy and paste through the terminal is not proper copy/paste.

        • leMe@anarchist.nexusEnglish
          1·
          2 days ago

          this functionality is only bloated and complicated for the person using a terminal a couple of times a year.

          i say that while looking like this when i see any editor but vim used:

          but i know my co-worker looks at me like this, because he knows he only ever uses vi:

        • homes@piefed.worldEnglish
          11·
          2 days ago

          Sit down by the campfire my dear youngin’ and I’ll talk you tales of a terror myth called ASSEMBLY

          OOOOOooOOOOOooOOO!

          Machine language! Direct memory addressing! AAAAAaaaaa!

          MWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

          Computers existed before the year 2000, you silly children…

            • homes@piefed.worldEnglish
              0·
              2 days ago

              https://demoscene.assembly.org/

              My favorite when I was a kid was absolutely, and without a doubt Second Reality by Future Crew. Full screen 3-D object rendering at 30 frames a second on a 486SX/25 CPU without a graphics card. in 1993

              Future Crew, active in the early 90s, was a legendary group within the demoscene. They were acclaimed for their groundbreaking demos, like “Second Reality”, that demonstrated advanced programming, visual artistry, and music composition. These works set new standards for what was possible in real-time computer graphics, and they inspired countless artists and programmers around the world. Despite the group’s dissolution in 1994, Future Crew’s influence on the demoscene and the broader fields of graphics and game development is undeniable, and their legacy continues to inspire creativity in the digital world.

              Fucking legendary.

              And it fit on a floppy

              Edit: I remember my friend Nick brought back a copy of Second Reality from ASSEMBLY 93, an annual convention of assembly developers where they would show off their programming prowess with these demos. Me and my friends got to see it before it hit the BBSs and Usenet. So fresh, yo!

              • bufalo1973@piefed.socialEnglish
                1·
                2 days ago

                I remember seen it in 1993 or 1994 in a friend’s PC with a Gravis Ultrasound. It was AMAZING. For comparison, the games of that year were almost all 16 bits platformers.

                • homes@piefed.worldEnglish
                  2·
                  2 days ago

                  I think it took me over an hour to get my sound blaster pro configured just right

                  Here’s another reference from the era, let’s see if you get it:

                  “Did you bring the pages?”

                  It was from a game, but not a platformer

  • esc@piefed.socialEnglish
    1·
    2 days ago

    Both nano and emacs suffer from the same problem - bad defaults. You need to pass like ten options to nano for it to work as expected to edit configuration files and small scripts.

      • esc@piefed.socialEnglish
        2·
        2 days ago

        alias nano='nano -A -D -E -F -T 4 -Z -g -i -l -m -q -t -% -_' and you need to enable syntax highlighting in nanorc (not all distros enable it by default) include /usr/share/nano/*.nanorc also there are additional/improved rules for highlighting here https://github.com/galenguyer/nano-syntax-highlighting and you can rebind every key, but it seems that it doesn’t support ‘chaining’ of keys nor multiple modifier keys at the same time.

        • 🌞 Alexander Daychilde 🌞@lemmy.worldEnglish
          2·
          2 days ago

          Nice, thanks!

          For anyone wondering about the options: https://i.imgur.com/hAjTxJO.png

          Also, apparently you can create ~/.nanorc and put the following in for those (instead of an alias):

          set smarthome
          set boldtext
          set tabstospaces
          set multibuffer
          set tabsize 4
          set zap
          set showcursor
          set autoindent
          set linenumbers
          set mouse
          set indicator
          set saveonexit
          set stateflags
          set minibar

          I’ll play around with those and the syntax stuff. I definitely personally do not want the saveonexit behaviour, but you’ve started me on the path of looking at the other options, and that right there shows me it’s worth my time to look, so thank you :)

  • heliotrope@retrofed.comEnglish
    1·
    2 days ago

    I’ve used Vim, NeoVim, Micro, mg(1), JOE, and even MS Edit (both the original DOS version and the recent Rust clone). No matter how complex and tailored I wrote my config, though, the features I actually used were included in GNU nano and/or my command shell without any of the bugs, bloat, learning curve, or slop.

    Using it as my default just makes sense.

    • UnfortunateShort@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      3 days ago

      It is insane how far using the same shortcuts literally everything else can get you in the world of terminal text editors and yet here we are

  • AgentSeven@lemmy.zip
    1·
    3 days ago

    I’m in the “been working with Linux since the 90s” gang so I call vim vi and nano pico and when I started there was a coolness factor to be considered. I was incredibly uncool so I used whatever I wanted, including pico - I mean you used pine for email back in the day and the interface was nearly identical, so whatever.

    But I did want to be at least a tiny bit cooler, so I learned vi in a fairly rudimentary fashion. I can edit, jump, delete, search, replace, copy and paste - oh, and I can exit. I’ve spent so much time using vi, that my brain doesn’t even have to think about exiting, not even whether I want to write or not. It just happens like second nature. It’s actually gotten to where nano seems unduly burdensome to me.

    But really, I prefer an IDE for programming. CLI editors will always be for configuration files and shell scripts to me.