back to original title - manual humour.
my favorite was in the "form" command.
-- credit to mcilroy.

"If one of the special characters [{]}\ is preceded
by a \, it loses its special character."


On Wed, Mar 10, 2021 at 11:50 AM Andy Kosela <akosela@andykosela.com> wrote:

> On 3/10/21, Andreas Kusalananda Kähäri <andreas.kahari@abc.se> wrote:
> > 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.
>
> This comment resonates with me so much.  I am enjoying these days
> mostly retro systems too -- computers I grew up with.  There is a
> certain beauty in the term "less is more".  And nothing is more
> satisfying than sitting in front of a CRT terminal (either some real
> terminal or PC) and working in a full screen text mode.  No GUIs, no
> distractions -- just pure conversation with a machine using only text.
> That's UNIX for me.
>
> These days there have been a huge resurgence of various retro
> communities around the world.  There are still tons of new programs
> and games being published for 8-bit micro's or Amiga's.  Still it
> appears the Unix community in general is not part of that movement.  I
> think TUHS is an exception and a haven for people who just prefer the
> old ways.  I find Unix these days too bloated and moved away from its
> main core values: simplicity and minimalism.  The hardware was much
> simpler too back in the days.
>
> Long live the ed(1) and vi(1).
>
> --Andy
>