Microsoft Edit

There is also dte[1]. It hits exactly the same notch and offers an extremely lean editor with Unicode support, CUA key bindings and much more. It has replaced nano as my terminal editor.

[1]: https://craigbarnes.gitlab.io/dte/

Why are you opposed to learning vi which is already installed everywhere?

as someone who uses CLI text editors frequently, but not often enough to build the muscle memory which remembers VI shortcuts, i really appreciate simple text editors.

i know that i can press like 3-4 arbitrary buttons to mark a block to move it to a different place - how about i just mark it with my cursor and CTRL-X CTRL-V, like every freaking other program out there.

i appreciate that i got VI on freshly installed or secured servers, but for things i use daily, i just want it to be KISS. already counting on people answering 'but vim is easy and simple'. opinions differ i guess.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9n1dtmzqnCU

Because vi has all the usability of a keyboard made out of hedgehogs.

I learned vi a long time ago and use it when no other editor is at hand. In fact, I am using several editors simultaneously, depending on the task at hand and what is availabe. I stumbled over dte because I like to try out new things. And because dte hits many sweet spots for me, I installed it on machines where I often need a terminal editor. Binding myself to only one tool just because I learned to use it at some point in time is not my philosophy. Thankfully, the open source world offers so many alternatives and innovations, so that there is something for almost all tastes and habits. It comes with no costs besides building muscle memory to switch as needed and wanted.

I wouldn't consider vi usability to be overall bad. Sure, affordance ("is it easy grasp which moves i can make without affording much cognitive effort?") is terrible.

Setting up a decent environment is also a huge pain to get started with, but nowadays you can just hop into a prewarmed pool with premade setups like Normalvim or LunarVim.

But usability is not just "is it easy to learn", it's also "once i know it, how hard is it to use"

Once the moves are ingrained in your (muscle-)memory it becomes so incredibly efficient. di{, dat, yaf etc. are just the low hanging fruit, once you start with regex, macros and plugins the fun really begins.

I'd recommend everyone to take a look and read some of dte's source code. It's a great example of beautifully written modern C code.

Learning CUA once is more realistic/convenient for most people.

I like vim a lot, and I use vim-style bindings wherever I can.

But before I learned to ride a bike, I used training wheels, and before I learned enough vim to enjoy using vim, I leaned on nano.

When someone is first learning to explore GNU/Linux, or even to dig into the Unix guts of macOS, they're learning a whole new world, not just a new text editor. For some people, strategic bridges to what they know (like CUA or Windows-like shortcuts) can make this process more fun and less fatiguing. Sometimes that difference is decisive in keeping someone motivated to learn and explore more.

Anyway, I think vim is worth learning (and maybe some of the quirks of old-school vi, if you expect to work on old or strange systems). It's not a matter of if I recommend that someone learn vim, but when. And until it's time for them to explore an editor deeply, micro seems like a great fit for most people.

I also want to say: as enthusiasts of Unix-like operating systems, or as professionals who appreciate some of their enduring strengths, should we really embrace a "because it's there" doctrine? Isn't that same kind of thinking responsible for huge, frustrating piles of mediocrity that we work with every day and resent?

ss someone who loves an ecosystem built first by volunteers as "just a hobby, nothing big and serious", I will it's sad, if not hypocritical, to dismiss software projects just because they aren't already dominant players. Most software I love was once marginal, something its users went to lengths to install on the systems they used because they enjoyed it more than the defaults. We should, to the extent practical, try to leave a little room for that in the way we approach computing— even as we get older and grumpier.

vi isn’t usable. it sucks. but the facts are it’s installed everywhere and you can learn how to use it in 10-15 minutes. easier to patch your ignorance of basic vi than it is to install software on every machine you’ll ever edit on.

You realize that you're asking this in a discussion of a tool that is intended to be installed out of the box on Microsoft Windows, where vi is not installed out of the box, right? Your "everywhere" doesn't include the primary use case for what is being headlined here.