Re: Recommended editor for novice programmers?
On Fri 08 Sep 2017 at 03:24:11 (+0100), Nick Boyce wrote:
> On Wed, 06 Sep 2017 16:19:03 +1000
> Ben Finney <bignose@debian.org> wrote:
>
> > Nick Boyce <nick@steelyglint.org> writes:
> >
> > > I don't want to provoke any religious war here, and sorry if I offend
> > > anybody, but:
> >
> > That doesn't alter the fact that you've disparaged programs in terms
> > that state an absolute problem inherent to the program. This is not
> > helpful, because it implies that people who choose those programs are
> > wrong and should be disparaged themselves.
>
> I do disparage software when it seems ungood, but there is no implication from me that people who use that software are in any way to be disparaged - there may be many reasons why they're using that software, and my (possibly mistaken) opinion may even help them realise they have choices they didn't know about. We all have to start learning somewhere - and it never ends.
>
> >
> > For example:
> >
> > > emacs is ridiculously heavy-weight
> >
> > That's an absolute statement of objective fact.
>
> I realise I should have scattered IM(H)Os all through my email, so lets start now: IMO it *is* an objective fact. emacs is *huge* (please don't ask me for numbers) and cumbersome and overengineered if what you want is a lightweight lean fast straightforward text editor (and I usually do).
No, the ridiculous thing here is the contradiction:
"IMO it *is* an objective fact",
and it's immediately followed by a circular argument.
Now, it's arguable that emacs is large compared with many other
editors. However, it contains a lot of functionality, and that means
lots of code. But just how important is the volume of code that's
available when you're actually editing a file?
I'm typing on a i386 laptop with 500MB of memory. Editing a 25MB
file, the memory reported by top is
emacs 15%
nano 7.5%
Meanwhile, I have firefox open on the results of a google search.
That's currently reading
firefox-esr 31% + Web Content 28%
By way of contrast, if I boot up the machine, start X (using the
fvwm window manager) and bring up the wunderground weather forecast
on opera (far faster than using firefox), the machine uses all
500MB of memory and 300MB of the 1GB swap. As you can imagine,
it's not quick.
So, with respect to this laptop, the size of emacs is irrelevant.
> I remember an operating system whose response to commands was only ever 'OK' or 'ER' .... I don't like to tell you what I thought about that, but some people liked it because it didn't waste their time with verbiage.
OK would be rather verbose for Unix.
Cheers,
David.
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