Re: Recommended editor for novice programmers?

[rhkramer@gmail.com]

On Saturday, September 02, 2017 06:46:33 PM davidson@freevolt.org wrote:
> On Sat, 2 Sep 2017, Mario Castelán Castro wrote:
> [snip]
> 
> > On 02/09/17 13:34, Dejan Jocic wrote:
> >> You can set up both Vim and Emacs as powerful programming editors.
> > 
> > These are the *worst* possible suggestions. Both of these editors
> > require a lot of learning to even use them at all. If the OP follows
> > your advice, his users will have the impression that all software in
> > GNU/Linux is as arcane and difficult to use as GNU Emacs and Vim
> > are.
> 
> I somehow doubt that you yourself find Emacs or Vim "difficult to
> use", or believe their design is "arcane". (Of course, I might well be
> mistaken. I'm only guessing.)
> 
> My contrary view, for whatever it might be worth: In the early weeks
> of my own initiation to a unix-like operating system, we used
> Emacs. Accompanied by a cheat-sheet of commonly useful keyboard
> shortcuts, I found that learning the basics of Emacs in particular,
> and navigating the self-contained documentation, was an eye-opening
> introduction to the unix-like world and its universe of reliable
> tools.
> 
> When, many years later, I developed a greater interest in computers, I
> was happy to discover that
> 
>    1. I hadn't been taught only how to ride a tricycle, but had been
>    riding a full-fledged bicycle all along, and
> 
>    2. I would never need to learn to use another text-editor again, if
>    I didn't want to do so.

I "grew up" using editors (of a sort) (or card punches) (or teletype machines) 
on a variety of other OSs (IBM 360, Univac 1108, PDP-8, -11 (and one other) 
VAX, Foxboro, Westinghouse, (not in sequential order), and eventually DOS, 
Windows, and Linux.  I didn't encounter Vim or Emacs until I got to Linux.  By 
then I was very used to GUI editors, a vast improvement over things I had used 
before.

I made more than one attempt to learn both, and I do occasionally use vi (when 
I'm stuck with no other editor), but I wouldn't wish either on a novice 
programmer.  Further, I don't think they have any advantage over a good GUI 
editor with features like a scripting language, keyboard macros, outlining / 
folding, syntax highlighting, and such.