In the beginning…
In the beginning, there was ed.
Ed is the standard text editor.
Then there was vi, and it was good.
Then came emacs, and disharmony.
-Extract from intro to Word War vi
In 1976 one man changed the face of text editors. That man is Bill Joy who developed vi for BSD UNIX. To those who are a bit unfamiliar with command line UNIX/Linux, vi (short for Visual) is a screen-oriented text editor that operates in two modes: insert mode and normal mode. Please reference here for a deeper explanation of its design and implementation.
I was first introduced to vi when I started working with FreeBSD back in 2001 and continued to work on it when I started to play around with Red Hat Linux 7.3 in 2002. Once I started to understand and get more comfortable with vi, there was no turning back. Seriously! All those vi/emacs fanatics out there know exactly what I mean. Even in a Microsoft Windows environment I have to install Cygwin to get all of my much needed tools, which includes vi.
Today I utilize vim (Visual IMproved) but when I think about it, it constantly throws me back to what has been dubbed “the Editor War.” It was after vi that emacs came rich with its own features and functionality and then a “holy war” broke out. You were either on the side of vi or the side of emacs.
Just recently I had to go on-site to the campus of Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab) and when speaking with an applications development manager who knew I was extremely comfortable with POSIX-like platforms and architectures, he had asked me, “Emacs or Vi?” I simply replied, “Vi and grep, all the way.” He had a look of brief disappointment as he turned to a colleague of his next to him. She commented how she was on my side. That look of disappointment quickly turned to a look of betrayal. That passion still courses through the veins of many.
Now I ask you, which text editor would you prefer? Vi, Emacs, or other? And do you still feel the war in your daily life?
I would not use a system that did not have a graphical text editor. Time to come out of the dark ages.
Comment by ngs — 9. January 2009 @ 15:01
ngs hasn’t a clue. GUI text editors are for the weak minded, unless the GUI text editor is gvim. I even have vi hacked into my web browser, so I don’t have to use my mouse or arrow keys to move around text boxes.
Comment by Legatus — 9. January 2009 @ 15:26
ngs - time to grow up and turn off your Windows computer. Maybe when you become a teenager.
Comment by vi — 9. January 2009 @ 15:56
I had to learn a little vi and emacs when I took a Linux/UNIX course once - never again would I use one of those if I have a choice in the matter at all - not even gvim (which I have tried too). Having said that, it’s amazing what you could put these things up to do.
However, the learning curve is just not worth the frustration for the most people, including me. I would be curious to know how many of the purely text based editor evangelists were first and foremost gui-based editor users who then made the switch and now call the rest “weak-minded” My guess is not that many and that those who do prefer text-based editors were probably “forced” to learn it at a time when gui was not accessible.
Comment by Joe — 9. January 2009 @ 16:06
Gedit all the way . vi was good but now its outdated…
Comment by sith — 9. January 2009 @ 16:20
I’ve always used vi in the past but some time back I converted to nano. I know, I know.. “That’s not a *real* editor!” I agree ..but I think the reason I like it is the same reason one might bang that strange hippy chick that lives next door.. nano is not something your going to marry, but it’s a quick dirty little editor that gets the job done and has no complications.
Comment by GNU Nano — 9. January 2009 @ 16:26
Who said anything about MS Windows…
My computer of choice at home is my Mepis 7 HP laptop. I does everything I need it to do. Video extensive work.
At work yes I use XP Pro. Only becaus the guy that signs my paycheck tells me to.
Comment by ngs — 9. January 2009 @ 16:50
I actually used to use GUI text editors all the time and I never really had a problem with it. I started reading about vi and vim and finally decided to try out to see what all the fuss was about. Initially it was real tough learning all the commands but after a while the power is just amazing. I can’t be as fast with a GUI text editor as I am with Vim. And once you get a hang of netrc (file explorer), then there simply is no replacement.
Comment by Vim — 9. January 2009 @ 16:54
@ VI…
My grandkids are teenagers and use linux…
@ legatus
Being 27 years in the business of computing, I have a clue. I’m really glad Vi work for you.
@ sith
I used Gedit, something about it made me move to Kwrite and sometimes kate.
I use the command line but prefer graphical tools when available.
Comment by ngs — 9. January 2009 @ 16:58
vim and vimperator of course, and viemu for visual studio - the world is great!
Comment by housetier — 9. January 2009 @ 17:01
@Legatus: Could you explain how you got vi info your browser? I’d *love* to have that. Standard text areas are a major pain. I’m always littering my texts with capital Vs from attempts to select lines of text :-)
Comment by Sander Marechal — 9. January 2009 @ 17:51
Vi (vim plus a few choice plugins)
I had been a GUI editor users for something like 15 years before I attempted to learn vi. I took my time, used it when i had a project that didn’t need to be done immediately and soon enough I was very comfortable with the basics and was able to transition to it as my primary editor within about 4 months of fairly casual use.
The thing about vi, is that it’s optimized for editing. If you are just writing, any gui editor will do fine, but nothing can beat the speed of vi for actually editing a file.
The nice thing about vi is you can learn to use it for writing very easily - and become just as productive as when you used the GUI editor, and you can pick up editing tricks a little at a time. Before you realize it, you can whip through a file, editing it without realizing that you actual had to learn some “arcane” commands…you just do it automatically.
Sweetness!
Comment by nickoljt — 9. January 2009 @ 17:59
For me, “pico”, “nano”, or “joe” all the way — I don’t relish having to remember awkward sequences for the most simple jobs.
Comment by Federico Kereki — 9. January 2009 @ 18:08
VIM for me :)
I have used other ones.. but this one just seems more me.
Although, I do use Gedit a lot too.
Comment by Jam — 9. January 2009 @ 18:58
I use Vim and Gedit. There are times I use the terminal then I use vim. Gedit is powerful in its own way but Vim is a good editor to use for programming. I use Bluefish for writing HTML . I have tried Emacs and it is a good editor but Vim for me feels more natural. A lot of times in the GUI I will use gvim. I have used Joe also and for a simple command line editor it is powerful and has a help table to help the novice with its few commands.
Comment by Stephen — 9. January 2009 @ 19:43
I have tried them all: nedit, gedit, jedit, kate, emacs… you name it. But I always come back to vim.
The main reason is that although it launches in a blink, it is extremely powerful.
I would say that the only drawback with vim is actually the learning curve. But believe me it is worth it!!! The time spent learning vim has been repaid a million times for me.
Comment by flipouk — 10. January 2009 @ 01:49
my first job I used a line editor similar to ed on a dec writer. No tube terminals back then. When I got my first Unix job back in ‘82 I fell in love with vi. When co-workers got stuck and cursed vi, I would put my arm around them and console them and help them out.
Then I discovered emacs and it was bye bye vi. That was around 1988. I do a lot of work on remote servers and the first thing I do is fire up ‘emacs -nw’ in a terminal window. No Xemacs for me, strictly original, old school emacs.
Now I just started a new job and they provide 3 IDEs: Visual Studio, Eclipse, and Netbeans. I had to try out each one. I really like Netbeans, but I find I’m using Eclipse more. I’m an open source kind of guy so VS has no appeal to me.
Damn I love those IDEs. They expose all the information so well. I still remember how to use vi, and emacs is always in my toolbox, but those IDEs are sure sweet.
Comment by Greg Strockbine — 10. January 2009 @ 02:54
Vim forever, no doubt :)
Comment by Debianero Rumbero — 10. January 2009 @ 04:41
My first text editor on UNIX platform was VI and today I use VIM.
VI/VIM is everywhere, every linux/bsd distro has VI or VIM installed by default, I know some guys most of them use VIM and we make jokes with that ones that use Emacs but just kidding :] we have fun…
Comment by Gullit — 10. January 2009 @ 05:49
I hate “vi” - had the chance to use in on Solaris 10 where it is a default editor. This is probably worst of text editors I have ever seen in my life. Even M$DOS’ edit.com is slightly better.
I use VIM for pretty much everything on daily basis as my main workhorse.
Tried several times to learn Emacs (and in fact I know more about Emacs than most Emacs users I have met in past) yet I have dismissed it as too hard to learn and too hard to use efficiently/too interactive. Emacs makes me slow. VIM’s nature fits my work organization much better.
Comment by Dummy00001 — 10. January 2009 @ 11:11
I first learned DECs EDT when I was working on terminals connected to PDP-8’s, then later PDP-11’s, and then VAX machines. In the late 80’s I used HP unix machines, and Sun workstations where I used “vi” to do my editing work. I’ve never bothered with “emacs” since “vi” does what I want. “Emacs” looks powerful, but it would require some time investment which I would rather use for something more pressing. So I likely will never be proficient at “emacs” no great loss I think.
Comment by Dawson — 10. January 2009 @ 23:38
@Sander Marechal: Vimperator is a firefox add-on that makes firefox to behave and look like vim. Try it out.
Mozilla add-on page: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/4891
Home page: http://vimperator.org/trac/
Comment by memin — 13. January 2009 @ 18:50
Actually, it’s “word war vi”, not “world war vi.”
Common enough mistake. I suck at naming my projects.
http://wordwarvi.sf.net
– steve
Comment by SteveC — 14. January 2009 @ 21:35
I do apologize that. I knew that but I guess I unconsciously made the error. Now it has been corrected with a link to the project. ;-)
Petros
Comment by admin — 15. January 2009 @ 05:50