You VI People Slay Me
Can you be any more clueless?
VI has got to be, bar none, the most difficult editor to learn of all the editors commonly advertised on a given system. What the fuck is with the damned beep and no-beep mode?
Have you noticed how illogical that is in relation to, oh, every one of its contemporaries? What other 'modern' (not my words) editor uses anything other than arrow keys for directional movement? What other 'modern' editor switches modes between a navigation mode and a line-editing mode? Carpal Tunnel, my ass: that 'home key' excuse is just beause VI may date from a time before arrow keys were commonly offered on keybaords.
I find it darkly hilarious when I see references to 'vigr' or 'vipw' in HOWTO-style docuyments: most recently, some sadistic bastard suggested someone 'just try' vigr while setting up the Samba server. It's like the author's too out of touch with people to realize that the poor victim he just suggested 'try' vigr will not be able to get out of the app unless he or she already has enough experience with VI to actually know exactly what vigr is anyway! After all, the existence of so many proprietary editors for passwords, groups, crontab and sudoers files are the only benefit to VI at all. The only selling point is "It's already everywhere."
So I guess I see why you must constantly pitch it: the massive Network Effect is the only thing pushing people to get over the steep and pointless learning curve. If they cripple their computing with an editor requiring them to contantly hit the ESC paddle, before they can install something with features and usability, they will need to pitch it themselves down the road; it's the only way to ensure this tortuous practice continues, and they need not learn anything else.
Stay in the dark, mewling and scratching your own eyes out for the purpose of clarity; just try not to drag anyone else into your ditch kingdom.
VI has got to be, bar none, the most difficult editor to learn of all the editors commonly advertised on a given system. What the fuck is with the damned beep and no-beep mode?
Have you noticed how illogical that is in relation to, oh, every one of its contemporaries? What other 'modern' (not my words) editor uses anything other than arrow keys for directional movement? What other 'modern' editor switches modes between a navigation mode and a line-editing mode? Carpal Tunnel, my ass: that 'home key' excuse is just beause VI may date from a time before arrow keys were commonly offered on keybaords.
I find it darkly hilarious when I see references to 'vigr' or 'vipw' in HOWTO-style docuyments: most recently, some sadistic bastard suggested someone 'just try' vigr while setting up the Samba server. It's like the author's too out of touch with people to realize that the poor victim he just suggested 'try' vigr will not be able to get out of the app unless he or she already has enough experience with VI to actually know exactly what vigr is anyway! After all, the existence of so many proprietary editors for passwords, groups, crontab and sudoers files are the only benefit to VI at all. The only selling point is "It's already everywhere."
So I guess I see why you must constantly pitch it: the massive Network Effect is the only thing pushing people to get over the steep and pointless learning curve. If they cripple their computing with an editor requiring them to contantly hit the ESC paddle, before they can install something with features and usability, they will need to pitch it themselves down the road; it's the only way to ensure this tortuous practice continues, and they need not learn anything else.
Stay in the dark, mewling and scratching your own eyes out for the purpose of clarity; just try not to drag anyone else into your ditch kingdom.
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home