It's worth noting that a lot of the text editing done in the vi family are just calls to ed with different ways of doing selections.
I wonder how it went for the farms that stuck to "non-tractor-generated crops" in the 1900s.
Sounds familiar.
[1]: “However, even though steam-powered tractors provided an alternative to draft animals, the size, mechanical complexity and risk of explosion rendered these tractors unusable for most farms.” https://www.volocars.com/blog/history-of-tractors-in-agricul...
Granted, it's more about chemicals than tractors, but still quite close to the spirit of the comments. Bio approach sacrifices some tech advances.
What I wish existed was a fork of Busybox Vi which fully supports UTF-8. I’ve looked at the code and it would require a considerable rewrite to make it UTF-8 compatible, so I can see why it hasn’t been done.
When I don't have a GUI available, I use micro, nano, joe.
Vim on the other hand never felt like it benefited much from a GUI, or like it had a very good one available. I just use neovim in a terminal.
Granted, the UI is still TUI, so items like panes, tabs, nerdtree, quickfix, :help windows etc are rendered with characters, but you can drag borders, mouse-select text, click files, focus panes by clicking, scroll-wheel, etc.
I sometimes try working without vim keybindings as it's a pain installing them everywhere. I usually give up the 3rd time I have to delete a function argument and can't dt, or select the body of a function and can't vi{.
For everyone even somewhat decent at vim, having to hold right arrow until the cursor reaches the target is a humiliation ritual, and I genuinely feel second-hand embarrassment and pity when I see people do that.
> What would you do differently?
> JOY: I wish we hadn't used all the keys on the keyboard.
> ...
> JOY: The fundamental problem with vi is that it doesn't have a mouse and therefore you've got all these commands. In some sense, its backwards from the kind of thing you'd get from a mouse-oriented thing.
> Its like one of those pinatas - things that have candy inside but has layer after layer of paper mache on top. It doesn't really have a unified concept. I think if I were going to go back - I wouldn't go back, but start over again.
shots fired:
> JOY: I can just look at my screen, and when I print it off, it's the same as it looks on the screen. It is formatted, and I'm tired of using vi. I get really bored. There have been many nights when I've fallen asleep at the keyboard trying to make a release. At least now I can fall asleep with a mouse in my hand. I use the Xerox optica mouse instead of the other one because it is color coordinated with my office. Did you notice? I prefer the white mouse to the black mouse. You've got to have some fun, right?
But of course he was wrong about 1991-2026:
The days of non-raster stuff are numbered, though sheer momentum will carry it to the end of the decade.
And about AT&T as the same year (1984) they introduced BLIT terminal:
The fundamental tension in UNIX that I think AT&T doesn't understand is that everyone is going to have a bitmap.
Of course this is a total digression.