Re: [TUHS] manual humour (was tunefs -m 5%)

["Andreas Kusalananda Kähäri" <andreas.kahari@abc.se>]

On Tue, Mar 09, 2021 at 06:51:56PM -0500, Steve Nickolas wrote:
> On Wed, 10 Mar 2021, Rob Pike wrote:
> 
> > I'm curious when people (other than me) erred and stopped saying that ed
> > was the standard editor.
> > 
> > -rob
> > 
> 
> I actually use that expression in somewhat unorthodox ways. ;)
> 
> Like "CDE is the standard desktop environment like ed is the standard text
> editor." (I still consider both to be true even though about no one uses
> either anymore.)
> 
> -uso.

Hi, I'm "about no one".  I use ed(1) every once in a while, both the
way it was supposed to be used, i.e. interactively, and occasionally
scripted on smaller documents.

I'm soon 50.  Having grown up with computers, and having spent most of
my money as a student buying the next bigger and/or faster PC, I find
that I nowadays enjoy smaller, slower systems and simpler editors more
and more.  Getting distracted by syntax highligting, confused by too
complicated configurations... There is a certain beauty in the editing
language of ed(1).  It's minimalistic and restrictive, and therefore
forces you to think, to remember, and to be creative.

One of my big sorrows is not *having* to deal with ed(1) as a youngster
or student, over slow modem links.  I think I would appreciate Unix even
more now if I had.  I was born one or two decades too late.

ed(1) is still the standard editor though, and so is ex(1) and vi(1), at
least if POSIX is to be believed :-)


-- 
Andreas (Kusalananda) Kähäri
SciLifeLab, NBIS, ICM
Uppsala University, Sweden

.