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wandering.shop is one of the many independent Mastodon servers you can use to participate in the fediverse.
Wandering.Shop aims to have the vibe of a quality coffee shop at a busy SF&F Convention. Think tables of writers, fans and interested passers-by sharing drinks and conversation on a variety of topics.

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Charlie Stross

Absolutely not THIS is the peak of user interface design!
mastodon.online/@nikitonsky/11

A terminal window containing a vim text editor session, showing what vim 7.3 displays when you run it with no arguments:
Public
Scimon Proctor

@cstross

Only because it shows :q on the page (and negative points for not showing :q! )

I have never forgiven vi for not starting in insert mode. And I never will.

When I open a text editor I want to type stuff and it to appear on the screen.

Public
nat
@scimon @cstross

> When I open a text editor I want to type stuff and it to appear on the screen.

That makes sense if your most common scenario is starting with an empty file and writing the whole thing in one go.

But if you've got a non-empty file, just typing in new stuff at the beginning or end without looking around first isn't terribly useful.
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Merc

@nat @scimon @cstross You say that as if it's an either-or choice the editor needs to make. Can the user move around, or can they immediately start typing text into the document. Every other editor has figured out how to allow the user to do both.

Charlie Stross

@merc @nat @scimon vi was an evolution of ex, which was designed for terminals with no arrow keys and no screen, just a QWERTY keyboard and a printer.

Mar 20, 2025, 03:34 PM·Public·Ivory for iOS
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Public
Merc

@cstross @nat @scimon I would bet that for its time, vi was a really well designed program. But daily driving vi today seems like driving a horseless carriage on modern streets.

To be fair, it's not the same horseless carriage from a century ago. It has decades worth of updates. But, its drivers still insist that the tiller is the ideal method of steering an automobile.

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