Re: [CentOS] Re: gcc editor for newbie (Emacs or vim or ?)
Lanny Marcus wrote: On Mon, Aug 11, 2008 at 1:30 PM, Scott Silva [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: on 8-11-2008 9:06 AM Lanny Marcus spake the following: snip I will look at Eclipse, but one of my goals is to be able to fix problems on a remote box and that will probably require vi. Then you shouldn't go wrong, because I have yet to be on a linux box or a bsd box that didn't have some form or emulation of vi installed. vi is everywhere! But, apparently, I need to learn how to use Emacs or another IDE too, so there's another learning curve. Just remember that you are using *vim* and not *vi* - which is a huge(!) difference. The core features are the same, but vim is so much more versatile than vi. And can be turned into an IDE (of some sorts) for programming. http://vim.org/ has *lots* of informations, tipps, tricks, code snippets and other stuff. Ralph pgp9q4ntf9nzI.pgp Description: PGP signature ___ CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
Re: [CentOS] Re: gcc editor for newbie (Emacs or vim or ?)
--On Monday, August 11, 2008 7:20 PM -0500 Lanny Marcus [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Then you shouldn't go wrong, because I have yet to be on a linux box or a bsd box that didn't have some form or emulation of vi installed. vi is everywhere! But, apparently, I need to learn how to use Emacs or another IDE too, so there's another learning curve. I agree, learn enough vi that you can deal with a minimal box for recovery situations. I learned EMACS back when it was written in TECO on a Tops-10 system. I didn't find it particularly hard to master. There's a built-in tutorial system to teach you basic navigation commands (eg. forward/backward character/word/line/page) and the default keystrokes make some sense (eg. ctrl-F is forward char, ESC-F is forward word, substitute B for backward, ctrl-P for previous line, ctrl-N for next line, etc.). Take a half hour to go through the tutorial and you should be pretty comfortable with the basics. vi derivatives are likely equally easy to master, but I've never been able to figure out the pattern for the keystrokes, so whenever I have to use it, I have to go look up the commands. These days I use Lugaru Epsilon, a commercial EMACS clone available for several platforms. But I want to get used to the traditional EMACS shipped with most distros. ___ CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
Re: [CentOS] Re: gcc editor for newbie (Emacs or vim or ?)
MHR wrote: Vi is not the world's best editor Heh, understatement of the century. It's an awful editor. I wish I could hire the person who came up with the user interface, only to have the satisfaction of having him/her fired five minutes later. With no severance package. It's one of the worst designs from a usability perspective. Yes, it's on every Unix system out there. Yes, it's very complex and can be powerful and can be extended to do a million things. Yes, you can train yourself so you learn it well enough so that the interface is not a problem anymore. But all that does not negate the basic fact that it's one of the most un-intuitive and essentially broken user interface designs ever. But we're stuck with it, which is unfortunate. Note: I'm not an Emacs fan. :-) -- Florin Andrei http://florin.myip.org/ ___ CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
Re: [CentOS] Re: gcc editor for newbie (Emacs or vim or ?)
On Tue, 12 Aug 2008 10:48:10 -0700 Florin Andrei [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: It's an awful editor. I wish I could hire the person who came up with the user interface, only to have the satisfaction of having him/her fired five minutes later. With no severance package. Viewed in the context of the time when it was originally created, it's a work of genius. There's a reason why it became the default text editor on Unix systems. -- MELVILLE THEATRE ~ Melville Sask ~ http://www.melvilletheatre.com ___ CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
Re: [CentOS] Re: gcc editor for newbie (Emacs or vim or ?)
Frank Cox wrote: On Tue, 12 Aug 2008 10:48:10 -0700 Florin Andrei [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: It's an awful editor. I wish I could hire the person who came up with the user interface, only to have the satisfaction of having him/her fired five minutes later. With no severance package. Viewed in the context of the time when it was originally created, it's a work of genius. There's a reason why it became the default text editor on Unix systems. I don't deny that. Interlaced video, at the time it was invented, was a great idea. Now it's a huge harassment for anyone doing video processing. The steam engine was a huge step forward - a few hundred years ago. And look at it now. -- Florin Andrei http://florin.myip.org/ ___ CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
Re: [CentOS] Re: gcc editor for newbie (Emacs or vim or ?)
On Tue, Aug 12, 2008 at 10:48:10AM -0700, Florin Andrei wrote: MHR wrote: Vi is not the world's best editor Heh, understatement of the century. It's an awful editor. I wish I could hire the person who came up with the user interface, only to have the satisfaction of having him/her fired five minutes later. With no severance package. It's one of the worst designs from a usability perspective. Yes, it's on every Unix system out there. Yes, it's very complex and can be powerful and can be extended to do a million things. Yes, you can train yourself so you learn it well enough so that the interface is not a problem anymore. But all that does not negate the basic fact that it's one of the most un-intuitive and essentially broken user interface designs ever. But we're stuck with it, which is unfortunate. Note: I'm not an Emacs fan. :-) Looking in perspective vi grew up with UNIX. At times when the output device just tilted from printers to CRTs the UNIX savvy perceived efficiency mainly in terms of reusing the legacy knowledge of ed, ex, and regex as well as resources, execution time, and fast and reliable command and display time on slow machines and interfaces. In these regards vi(m) simply excelled then as it does today. An intuitive interface shortens the learning curve. An efficient interface becomes a concern after that. vi came to serve in an environment where most were looking simply for efficiency, the way they perceived it back then. And some of those rules are still effective today. Of course I use vim to write this email. :) Cheers, Mihai ___ CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
Re: [CentOS] Re: gcc editor for newbie (Emacs or vim or ?)
On Tue, 12 Aug 2008 11:25:50 -0700 Florin Andrei [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Frank Cox wrote: On Tue, 12 Aug 2008 10:48:10 -0700 Florin Andrei [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: It's an awful editor. I wish I could hire the person who came up with the user interface, only to have the satisfaction of having him/her fired five minutes later. With no severance package. Viewed in the context of the time when it was originally created, it's a work of genius. There's a reason why it became the default text editor on Unix systems. I don't deny that. You did above. Bill Joy invented vi, by the way. You might want to read about his accomplishments sometime. Interlaced video, at the time it was invented, was a great idea. Now it's a huge harassment for anyone doing video processing. Interlaced video is very useful to extend the apparent bandwidth of an analog video stream, and that's useful in many applications, both today and tomorrow. Remember, everything doesn't revolve around the television in your living room and the monitor on your desk. The steam engine was a huge step forward - a few hundred years ago. And look at it now. In view of the fact that a nuclear reactor is basically a big steam engine, I fail to see your point -- MELVILLE THEATRE ~ Melville Sask ~ http://www.melvilletheatre.com ___ CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
Re: [CentOS] Re: gcc editor for newbie (Emacs or vim or ?)
Florin Andrei wrote: Frank Cox wrote: On Tue, 12 Aug 2008 10:48:10 -0700 Florin Andrei [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: It's an awful editor. I wish I could hire the person who came up with the user interface, only to have the satisfaction of having him/her fired five minutes later. With no severance package. Viewed in the context of the time when it was originally created, it's a work of genius. There's a reason why it became the default text editor on Unix systems. I don't deny that. Interlaced video, at the time it was invented, was a great idea. Now it's a huge harassment for anyone doing video processing. The steam engine was a huge step forward - a few hundred years ago. And look at it now. If interlaced video powered by a steam engine works for me, why should I change? My car is over 10 yrs old runs fine - don't need a new one. My house was built 45 yrs ago I like it - don't need a new one. I was born over 50 yrs ago I don't need . . . well, ok - maybe there's room for improvement. :-) -- Toby Bluhm Alltech Medical Systems America, Inc. ___ CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
Re: [CentOS] Re: gcc editor for newbie (Emacs or vim or ?)
Well, when people start to fail to understand your metaphors (or switch to the uber-literal-minded mode and attack the imperfections in the comparisons you make, instead of debating the original topic), you know it's pointless to continue the discussion. ;-) But the way this discussion evolved is a great illustration for why vi still survives today. If it was a rational decision, it would have died circa 1999. Alright, time for me to disappear from this thread. -- Florin Andrei http://florin.myip.org/ ___ CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
Re: [CentOS] Re: gcc editor for newbie (Emacs or vim or ?)
On Tue, 2008-08-12 at 20:45 +0200, Mihai T. Lazarescu wrote: On Tue, Aug 12, 2008 at 10:48:10AM -0700, Florin Andrei wrote: MHR wrote: Vi is not the world's best editor Heh, understatement of the century. It's an awful editor. I wish I could hire the person who came up with the user interface, only to have the satisfaction of having him/her fired five minutes later. With no severance package. It's one of the worst designs from a usability perspective. Yes, it's on Note: all pejorative terms originally penned in this reply have been expunged in the interests of tolerance of ignorance. Spoken like a youngster who has no knowledge of the history of how we got where we are now. Vi, based not only on the things that Mihai mentions below, was made available when memory and CPU was *expensive* and people who did software development were generally *competent*. The equipment of the day (ignoring very expensive mainframes, mostly IBM) upon which UNIX, ed, and the whole *IX foundation was developed, were along the lines of PDP 11/34 (later 11/70) with *big* (physically) slow (absolutely) and small (capacity) disks and little memory. CPU power was no great shakes either. One needed utilities that were very small and efficient. C was relatively new, higher-level languages were too inefficient and assembly language was still heavily used in many applications and wherever CPU or memory capacities were of major concern. Machine efficiency was paramount and user interface was secondary because of the relative costs and availability of resources - mechanical and human. Later (above time was mid '70s), a 16MHz 286 with a 10MB blinding fast 60ms average seek (IIRC?) HD and 64KB (*not* a typo, it was KB) of memory and 12 monitor (monochrome green screen) was advertised in the PC Tech Journal April 1984 (IIRC?) for only $10,995. I never had a problem with the user interface - it was a huge advance over SPF (what we had to use on IBM mainframes on 3270 terminals), IMO. Of course, the COBOL programmers complained incessantly when I tried to show them vi. Anyway, back on track. The adequacy of the user interface really depends very heavily on the desired goals and the user competence, learning speed, primary tasks, ... etc. When I drive my Corvette 2 miles each way to and from work (which I don't, never did) the solution doesn't fit the application. A bike is better, or walking. Any software tools can be so evaluated. For me, ed was great. Vi was even better. Emacs held no attraction. For *you*, none of these may be suitable. That doesn't make vi(m) what you chose to call it. For all the years I used it, it was fine. Integrated Development Environments were a nice step, but I still used and preferred vi within them. Well, 'nuff of my old fart rant about youngsters. every Unix system out there. Yes, it's very complex and can be powerful and can be extended to do a million things. Yes, you can train yourself so you learn it well enough so that the interface is not a problem anymore. But all that does not negate the basic fact that it's one of the most un-intuitive and essentially broken user interface designs ever. But I presume you never had to use a context editor like ed? Or the stupid MS editor that used to come on DOS? If so, you could not use the terms one of the most un-intuitive and essentially broken But, again, the time these things were developed dictated much of their design. we're stuck with it, which is unfortunate. Note: I'm not an Emacs fan. :-) Looking in perspective vi grew up with UNIX. At times when the output device just tilted from printers to CRTs the UNIX savvy perceived efficiency mainly in terms of reusing the legacy knowledge of ed, ex, and regex as well as resources, execution time, and fast and reliable command and display time on slow machines and interfaces. In these regards vi(m) simply excelled then as it does today. An intuitive interface shortens the learning curve. An efficient interface becomes a concern after that. vi came to serve in an environment where most were looking simply for efficiency, the way they perceived it back then. And some of those rules are still effective today. I'm afraid most of the really good rules are broken today. Best example is the original credo of UNIX: Do one thing and do it well. That was the design philosophy then. Free software development methodology tends to subvert that. Today, design towards mediocrity is the credo, ecouraging the users and developers to be less competent, imaginative and requiring less thought. Of course I use vim to write this email. :) Cheers, Mihai snip -- Bill ___ CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
Re: [CentOS] Re: gcc editor for newbie (Emacs or vim or ?)
On Tue, 12 Aug 2008 15:27:28 -0400 William L. Maltby [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Or the stupid MS editor that used to come on DOS? Edlin was good for automated remote script generation over a serial connection. (We used to do kiosks with today's weather report and the special at the restaurant down the block (etc.) using fancy batch files and Opus (the Fidonet-compatible BBS ) to do updates.) -- MELVILLE THEATRE ~ Melville Sask ~ http://www.melvilletheatre.com ___ CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
Re: [CentOS] Re: gcc editor for newbie (Emacs or vim or ?)
On Tue, Aug 12, 2008 at 03:27:28PM -0400, William L. Maltby wrote: On Tue, 2008-08-12 at 20:45 +0200, Mihai T. Lazarescu wrote: An intuitive interface shortens the learning curve. An efficient interface becomes a concern after that. vi came to serve in an environment where most were looking simply for efficiency, the way they perceived it back then. And some of those rules are still effective today. I'm afraid most of the really good rules are broken today. Best example is the original credo of UNIX: Do one thing and do it well. That was the design philosophy then. Free software development methodology tends to subvert that. Today, design towards mediocrity is the credo, ecouraging the users and developers to be less competent, imaginative and requiring less thought. I'm afraid that addressing the average needs is a widespread trend today even outside computing. Fortunate us that besides the shells of all-in-one programs we can find and work with those building blocks of the sound, original concepts. My point was concerning Florin remark that the basic needs for building an efficient UI had changed so much over time. The only additional UI standard device we have today is the mouse and we see an explosion of *G*UI. However, almost all modern GUI recognize the keyboard command efficiency and provide a range of shortcuts for power users. The best GUI even allow for user-configurable shortcuts and macros. Through modal operation vi pushed this one step further, shortening the interaction with the keyboard. A host of frequently used commands are one key away once you get your mind set that text entering ends with ESC. I can agree that shortening the keyboard interaction may not worth that much to many people. But this does not alter the fact that visually searching entries in menus takes a lot more that a keyboard shortcut for the same task. And a shortcut made of keys plus modifiers take longer than the same or less keys with less or no modifiers. On Tue, Aug 12, 2008 at 12:06:35PM -0700, Florin Andrei wrote: Well, when people start to fail to understand your metaphors (or switch to the uber-literal-minded mode and attack the imperfections in the comparisons you make, instead of debating the original topic), you know it's pointless to continue the discussion. ;-) It's up to you to see the points addressing the original topic within the replies. But the way this discussion evolved is a great illustration for why vi still survives today. If it was a rational decision, it would have died circa 1999. You may also fail to see why the development of mutt started about that time, borrowing obsoleties from both vi and mail. I'm afraid this does not make mutt a less rational decision or less usefull program, nor make of its or vim young and quite active developers nostalgics blind to progress. :) Alright, time for me to disappear from this thread. Mihai ___ CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
Re: [CentOS] Re: gcc editor for newbie (Emacs or vim or ?)
Edlin aarrgh my eyes... I don't know who to credit the quote to, but I think it's best described by: Windows. From the company that brought you edlin. -- Spiro Harvey Knossos Networks Ltd 021-295-1923www.knossos.net.nz ___ CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
Re: [CentOS] Re: gcc editor for newbie (Emacs or vim or ?)
On Mon, Aug 11, 2008 at 07:20:22PM -0500, Lanny Marcus wrote: On Mon, Aug 11, 2008 at 1:30 PM, Scott Silva [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: on 8-11-2008 9:06 AM Lanny Marcus spake the following: snip I will look at Eclipse, but one of my goals is to be able to fix problems on a remote box and that will probably require vi. Then you shouldn't go wrong, because I have yet to be on a linux box or a bsd box that didn't have some form or emulation of vi installed. vi is everywhere! But, apparently, I need to learn how to use Emacs or another IDE too, so there's another learning curve. A good IDE can help you manage and organize a local project. Stick with vi/vim/gvim and make for a while. Next add a revision control system (RCS) and patch to your tool kit. Some class material takes advantage of a specific IDE to manage the various bits in a class. In a 'good' class they begin with small components. Then they begin to reuse those components and build larger projects. If you are working through such a tutorial -- go with the flow and use what ever tool set they do. Eclipse is nice in that it can run both on Linux and Windows For a Java class it is a natural... Does anyone out there use Eclipse or another IDE with a distributed revision control system like, git, mecurial, cvs, bitkeeper, etc...? -- T o m M i t c h e l l Got a great hat... now what. ___ CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
Re: [CentOS] Re: gcc editor for newbie (Emacs or vim or ?)
On Mon, Aug 11, 2008 at 1:30 PM, Scott Silva [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: on 8-11-2008 9:06 AM Lanny Marcus spake the following: snip I will look at Eclipse, but one of my goals is to be able to fix problems on a remote box and that will probably require vi. Then you shouldn't go wrong, because I have yet to be on a linux box or a bsd box that didn't have some form or emulation of vi installed. vi is everywhere! But, apparently, I need to learn how to use Emacs or another IDE too, so there's another learning curve. ___ CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
Re: [CentOS] Re: gcc editor for newbie (Emacs or vim or ?)
On Mon, Aug 11, 2008 at 5:20 PM, Lanny Marcus [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: vi is everywhere! But, apparently, I need to learn how to use Emacs or another IDE too, so there's another learning curve. I've been using vi (and vim and gvim) for more than twenty years and I've never needed an IDE. They're helpful in some situations, but if you're programming on a UNIX/Linux platform, vi can be enough. There is even a way to get vi to coordinate with some compilers such that you land on the line where a syntax error occurs, but even that wasn't required. Vi is not the world's best editor, but it is in every single UNIX or Linux system out there, and there are advantages in knowing how to use it. I've used it long enough that I'm just not interested in other editors. As for IDEs, a great deal of what you need one for can often be accomplished just by having several windows open for the various tasks one needs for debugging. My $0.02, and it's not available for spending on editor wars. :-) mhr ___ CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
