is "vi" worth learning in 2022?

[kpedersen]

That might rule out people like Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, Rob Pike, many other Bell labs alumni....

I am sure that once they used i.e vi to write their own text editors, they were complete experts at using it

 

[blackbird9]

From this 'condensed history', ex/vi originated from berkely, which split off from bell latbs/att when unix was made available to universities. Quite what the bell labs guys were using at that time I don't know, but i'm sure they wouldn't have been stuck using ed alone if they could help it. As soon as interactive terminals became available, the demand for a screen editor would have been overwhelming.

A brief and incomplete history of modal text editors | Carlos Becker

In this post I’m going to talk about some old text editors you probably never heard of, what is modal text editing, and why people like it so much.

carlosbecker.com

 

[bakul]

I'm quite sure they didn't write all of unix, the C compiler, etc with ed.

You're sure how? AFAIK they did. The blit terminal came about in 1982 (Rob wrote the jim editor for that). By then unix was already quite well cooked. sam & acme & plan9 came much later.

People forget now that one can and did do their thinking *away* from a computer, at your desk. You then went to a "terminal" room to use the computer, the room shared with other people. That is where you discussed and shared ideas and topics.

 

[blackbird9]

So before terminals were available, and people were using line printers with keyboards as terminals, then yes, ed would be the way. But once terminals were available, they would have wanted a screen editor. If you look at this video, they're using terminals, of course that was filmed long after the early versions of unix had been written.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tc4ROCJYbm0

Anyway, I don't know because I wasn't there, but I know that's what I would have wanted.

 

[bakul]

From https://www.nokia.com/bell-labs/about/dennis-m-ritchie/hist.pdf

One of the comforting things about old memories is their tendency to take on a rosy glow. The programming environment provided by the early versions of Unix seems, when described here, to be extremely harsh and primitive. I am sure that if forced back to the PDP-7 I would find it intolerably limiting and lacking in conveniences. Nevertheless, it did not seem so at the time;

 

[blackbird9]

There is quite a long and involved history here

The True History of vi

How a broken pascal compiler, a 300 baud modem, and a 1970s terminal helped create the (in)famous text editor.

lunduke.substack.com

 

[blackbird9]

And this is why vi never took account of caps lock. Bill Joy's ADM-31 terminal back then didn't have a caps-lock key.

 

[blackbird9]

Anyway, this is all ancient history. Vi/ex has been the unix system editor for the last few decades, at least. Certainly since the mid to late 80s. You can fly to any country in the world, sit down at a unix system, and you will have vi available to you. No other screen editors are guaranteed to be available.

 

[bakul]

I am sure that once they used i.e vi to write their own text editors, they were complete experts at using it

They went from ed to *graphical* editors! Bell Labs at the time could afford graphics terminals like the Blit. It was only outside the Labs that people had to make do with cheap imitations of DEC's VT52.

 

[bakul]

You can fly to any country in the world, sit down at a unix system, and you will have vi available.

Still, one can do just fine without knowing vi and use ee or emacs or ed or whatever as they are freely available.

 

[blackbird9]

They went from ed to *graphical* editors! Bell Labs at the time could afford graphics terminals like the Blit. It was only outside the Labs that people had to make do with cheap imitations of DEC's VT52.

Sure, there was all kinds of experimentation at the time. Some solutions were adopted for widespread use, others weren't

 

[blackbird9]

Still, one can do just fine without knowing vi and use ee or emacs or ed or whatever as they are freely available.

You won't necessarily have ee or emacs or nano, etc available. Vi is the system editor that is guaranteed to be present, its part of the definition of unix. Unless a deliberate decision has been taken to remove it, eg to lock the system down. Vi / ex <<is>> the unix system editor. It's the one that was chosen, decades ago. It is a standard part of the unix userland. None of the others are. Its a standard part of unix, like 'ls', 'cat' and 'grep', etc.

 

[kpedersen]

They went from ed to *graphical* editors! Bell Labs at the time could afford graphics terminals like the Blit. It was only outside the Labs that people had to make do with cheap imitations of DEC's VT52.

True, mpx and mux do predate vi. I suppose the later Plan 9's terminals also famously doesn't provide the capabilities required for vi (until an attempt at a vim port many years later), so I suppose that also checks out.