There are hundreds of hundreds of “vim versus emacs versus nano” comparisons and they ultimately boil down to “this is what I like best”. I appreciate that the author decided not to focus on that retreaded muddy ground, and instead show how they have customized nano to their own needs.
I appreciate that the author didn’t try to write a One True Path manifesto and instead focused on a quick demo of things they like about nano and how to set them up.
Yeah, it’s a really weird choice to conclude what is ultimately no more than a tutorial on setting up syntax highlighting in nano with a comment about how you’ve proven nano is as capable an editor as vim or emacs. It is and has for years been beyond me how nano could ever be useful outside of making trivial config file changes in a system you don’t have root access on – these days it seems more ubiquitous than vim or ed. I was hoping this article would clear that up.
Then again, maybe there’s nothing to clear up; maybe there really are people who have no further requirements for an editor than being able to type text and save it to a file. I don’t know.
When I learned C, I decided to only use vi (not vim) without colors and without any custom config.
It’s a little weird at first, but the brain adapts (quickly) and recognizes the patterns. Now I don’t care which editor is on a system, or how it’s formatted on the web or in an e-mail.
Instead of vi, I use vis. But, in there, I do the same: I disable the syntax highlight, and I only use the default settings of the editor.
I read somewhere, someday, that working with disabled syntax highlight makes the programmer more attentive to the code, and consequently make less mistakes.
I actually never measured it, but I instinctively feel that I read more carefully the code base, and therefore I learned the code base I work on better than before.
I also started to appreciate the [Open|Net]BSD code style, because it helps to work on this style, and to use default UNIX tools to find parts of the code I am interested at.
It’s ubiquitous because it’s just what I’d expect from a debian system that some non-vim professional might have to administrate via CLI. And for anything that isn’t changing configs on remote systems / rescue mode I’ve got an IDE or Kate if it’s supposed to be simpler.
Many comments are already stating it: the article doesn’t really compare editors nor shows it any strengths GNU Nano has. Okay, one can change the interface in a minimal way and someone forced Nano to highlight syntactical elements with a patch. For me it looks like OP was overwhelmed by the possibilities of Emacs and Vim and wished for something simpler with just the minimal set of features. And that’s fine!
I’ve used both vim and emacs. I don’t like either of them, for differing reasons: modal editing doesn’t really fit my mental model of how an editor should work, and Emacs Lisp is not really a particularly fun language to use simply for customizing the behavior of an editor — as they say, Emacs is a nice operating system, it just needs a good editor.
Doesn’t look like they were overwhelmed. They just don’t like modal editing or Lisp and Nano has the features they do care about.
There are hundreds of hundreds of “vim versus emacs versus nano” comparisons and they ultimately boil down to “this is what I like best”. I appreciate that the author decided not to focus on that retreaded muddy ground, and instead show how they have customized nano to their own needs.
The critique of other editors is very weak here, was expecting something more.
The argument against Emacs is that Emacs Lisp is not fun? What makes nano’s configuration more fun?
I appreciate that the author didn’t try to write a One True Path manifesto and instead focused on a quick demo of things they like about
nanoand how to set them up.I agree with the comment; this is pretty light on how the author actually uses it.
Yeah, it’s a really weird choice to conclude what is ultimately no more than a tutorial on setting up syntax highlighting in nano with a comment about how you’ve proven nano is as capable an editor as vim or emacs. It is and has for years been beyond me how nano could ever be useful outside of making trivial config file changes in a system you don’t have root access on – these days it seems more ubiquitous than vim or ed. I was hoping this article would clear that up.
Then again, maybe there’s nothing to clear up; maybe there really are people who have no further requirements for an editor than being able to type text and save it to a file. I don’t know.
Some people can work perfectly fine with a minimal editor. For example Linus Torvalds with MicroEMACS.
When I learned C, I decided to only use vi (not vim) without colors and without any custom config.
It’s a little weird at first, but the brain adapts (quickly) and recognizes the patterns. Now I don’t care which editor is on a system, or how it’s formatted on the web or in an e-mail.
Instead of
vi, I usevis. But, in there, I do the same: I disable the syntax highlight, and I only use the default settings of the editor.I read somewhere, someday, that working with disabled syntax highlight makes the programmer more attentive to the code, and consequently make less mistakes.
I actually never measured it, but I instinctively feel that I read more carefully the code base, and therefore I learned the code base I work on better than before.
I also started to appreciate the [Open|Net]BSD code style, because it helps to work on this style, and to use default UNIX tools to find parts of the code I am interested at.
In other words, it leverages UNIX as IDE.
I am thinking about switching from
vimtovi+tmuxfor Go.So far the most challenging was:
Especially copy/paste. It turns out I heavily relied on yanking from one vim tab to another.
Which vi? nvi?
The version that came with the OS. Seems like nvi or at least based on nvi.
It’s ubiquitous because it’s just what I’d expect from a debian system that some non-vim professional might have to administrate via CLI. And for anything that isn’t changing configs on remote systems / rescue mode I’ve got an IDE or Kate if it’s supposed to be simpler.
I like to use nano for writing git / hub descriptions for commits / PRs
Many comments are already stating it: the article doesn’t really compare editors nor shows it any strengths GNU Nano has. Okay, one can change the interface in a minimal way and someone forced Nano to highlight syntactical elements with a patch. For me it looks like OP was overwhelmed by the possibilities of Emacs and Vim and wished for something simpler with just the minimal set of features. And that’s fine!
From the author:
Doesn’t look like they were overwhelmed. They just don’t like modal editing or Lisp and Nano has the features they do care about.