Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-lcc!ames!hc!lanl!cmcl2!brl-adm!brl-smoke!gwyn From: gwyn@brl-smoke.ARPA (Doug Gwyn ) Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions Subject: Re: vi vs emacs in a student environment Message-ID: <8196@brl-smoke.ARPA> Date: 30 Jun 88 19:46:20 GMT References: <399@cantuar.UUCP> <11418@steinmetz.ge.com> <6056@megaron.arizona.edu> Reply-To: gwyn@brl.arpa (Doug Gwyn (VLD/VMB)) Organization: Ballistic Research Lab (BRL), APG, MD. Lines: 16 In article <6056@megaron.arizona.edu> lm@megaron.arizona.edu (Larry McVoy) writes: >As a consultant I'll volunteer the following advice: don't get people used to >emacs. Please. Why? Because emacs is available on "some" unix machines. >Vi is available on almost all unix machines. Old habits die hard, so I think >it's better to start people out with something they can stay with... If "vi" weren't such a crappy editor this might be good advice. However, many users spend much of their time text-editing, so they should use the best editor available rather than suffer with inferior tools just because they are more universal. (If they really have to deal with a wide variety of UNIX systems, then it makes more sense to emphasize universality. It would also make sense in that case to provide better tools on all those systems.) I actually do use "vi" on my Sun, until I get "sam" running. (The SunTools text editor is a joke.) Given a choice between "vi" or an EMACS variant I'll choose EMACS, but those aren't the only choices.