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.