[Sheflug] What's that coming over the hill, is it a flame war? Is it a flame war? (was: re: Perl Tutorial)

[Chris J <cej@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

[with rather large apologies to The Automatic]

Stuff inline...

John Beaumont wrote:
>>> Just took a look at the first one, the Perl editor he uses is windows
>>> only. What would people suggest for Linux (Ubuntu) or OSX?
>>>
>> For want of starting an editor flame war, it has to be vim!
>>
>> Robin
> 
> I really don't like VIM/VI. It has a very steep learning curve. Anything
> that needs a command reference blu-tacked to your wall can't be good.
> Nano is the obvious and sensible replacement for sane people. (I know
> the old school among us will flame me for this!)

Had to be posted, but this has an element of truth about it :-)
	http://lca2srv30.epfl.ch/sathe/data/emacs_learning_curves.png

> If you're using Gnome then Scite is your best bet. It's highly
> configurable, uses GTK2, has great code highlighting, support for
> automatic indentation, supports tabs, collapsible code, and there's also
> a windows version so you'll never have change editors depending on what
> OS your on.

I can tick the same things off for Vim, and I'm assuming the Emacs people
can do the same. At the end of the day it's personal preference. I gave up
with relgion on editors a long time ago, with the proviso I can use what I
want without being forced to use anything else :-)

There's one good reason for learning vi over any other editor though, and
its one of practicalities rather than religion. Some UNIXes don't provide
any other editor other than ed, ex or vi. And even then you might not be
able to use vi[1].

Before people say "just install $EDITOR", that's not always possible due to
political/beuraucratic reasons...

Chris...
[1] Changing disk labels with 'ed' on a DEC OSF/1 box was an interesting
experience...

-- 
\ Chris Johnson                 \
 \ cej@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx          \ Quidquid latin dictum sit altum viditur
  \ http://cej.nightwolf.org.uk/  \
   \ http://redclaw.org.uk/        ~--------------------------------------



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