The other day I saw this tweet
I see no point in using software, because it's "vintage" :) I know #vi or #emacs has many devotees, but I have never understood why. https://t.co/I9VEmMZNIL
— Paul Littlebury (@jaffamonkey) November 5, 2016
and immediately thought of Paul Graham’s essay about Blub programmers. I don’t mean to beat up on Mr. Littlebury, who I don’t know but am sure is a splendid fellow. I do think, however, that rather than reveling in his lack of knowledge he might investigate why so many of the best engineers do use Vim or Emacs.
His main complaint appears to be that Vim and Emacs are old. To that point I recommend Vivek Haldar’s observation that editors are like wine. You want an editor that’s old because, as Haldar says, “You want the text editor that has been around long enough and used by enough geeks that every conceivable pattern of manipulating symbols on the screen has been thought of, and crystallized into a re-usable pack.”
We use a vintage editor not because of some weird retro fetishism but because we want the best possible tool to get the job done. And nano? Really? It’s a great editor for people who don’t use editors. It’s definitely not what I have in mind when I think of powerful tools. On the other hand, it does, apparently, help protect you from the old ones.