What is your favorite text editor?

I use kate and really love it, but since I started writing code on my console-bound FreeBSD laptop, I am being won over by vim. To be fair, though, I have kate open on the other laptop to reference code. How did people use to make programming work on a single screen with a single running process?
 
lost_in_c said:
I use kate and really love it, but since I started writing code on my console-bound FreeBSD laptop, I am being won over by vim. To be fair, though, I have kate open on the other laptop to reference code. How did people use to make programming work on a single screen with a single running process?
Click to expand...
Well, it was much easier to use ed(1) than to manually flip switches to specify address by address and to enter instructions into them 😉
And then came Borland with Turbo[enter_here_your_fav_lang] 😎

BTW, for Kate (my second fav) Meta+Ctrl+V for Vi input mode; to refine it: Settings → Configure KatePart...+Editing → VI Input Mode
 
I'm annoyed by how much that made me want to go back in time and play with the switches.

There's something undeniably alluring about telling the machine, by direct electrical circuitry, where everything is to be stored.

Also I didn't even know about ed(1). What a great program.
 
lost_in_c said:
I use kate and really love it, but since I started writing code on my console-bound FreeBSD laptop, I am being won over by vim. To be fair, though, I have kate open on the other laptop to reference code. How did people use to make programming work on a single screen with a single running process?
Click to expand...

I started in early 90s using BASIC interpreter and a lot of aid from physical code on paper - listings, magazines, book, my own scratchpad etc, on a PC XT clone with GW BASIC. Its editor is most primitive full screen editor you can imagine.

Moved to TUI stuff later on, QuickBASIC and Turbo C, there you could have multiple windows open and copy paste stuff, online help, etc. The online help was a serious gamechanger for a learner. Books were expensive.

There is a lot of usability improvement between these two scenarios and both are single screen single process DOS stuff.
 
lost_in_c said:
I'm annoyed by how much that made me want to go back in time and play with the switches.

There's something undeniably alluring about telling the machine, by direct electrical circuitry, where everything is to be stored.

Also I didn't even know about ed(1). What a great program.
Click to expand...
Ed is the standard text editor.

As for the programming using switches, please check Obsolescence Guaranteed and their PDP-8 , PDP-10 , and PDP-11 replicas.

There is also IMSAI 8080 replica, although, personally I’ll prefer Cromemco Z-1 replica

P.S. Edit: There is a brilliant and hilarious book “Ed Mastery” by Michael W. Lucas, ebook is only $5 on his store. I can't recommend it more.
 
Zare said:
Its editor is most primitive full screen editor you can imagine.
Click to expand...
You obviously never coded BASIC on ZX Spectrum in default Sinclair Basic, right? Boy, when I got my hands on Beta Basic which had ability to move cursors over whole 32x24 screen I thought that I’m such a 1337 H4x0r! 😁

People are joking about exiting vi, but only if they never used nv-edit on CP/M 😉
 
vmisev said:
You obviously never coded BASIC on ZX Spectrum in default Sinclair Basic, right? 😉
Click to expand...

Yup I started with PC and didn't have the khm privilege of working with 8 bit micros :D

My Olivetti XT machine (1986) was actually great for programming as it used 640x400 resolution with a 8x16 font (IBM standard is 640x200 with 8x8) and had a hard drive.

On Spectrum that's a line editor right? So it's worse than C64.

I guess it doesn't go much worse than that. Punch cards I suppose.
 
the spectrum default/basic editor and the hisoft compiler/assembler editors where good enough, like a combo of ex + readline
i used an apple ii basic editor once and it felt shittier than the spectrum one
 
covacat said:
the spectrum default/basic editor and the hisoft compiler/assembler editors where good enough, like a combo of ex + readline
i used an apple ii basic editor once and it felt shittier than the spectrum one
Click to expand...
Nah, Beta Basic FTW! Could you do this in Sinclair or Apple Basic?
ZX Spectrum 48K "Fractal Fern", High Resolution 256✕511 render. Run on Spectrum, ZX 1 RS232 binary dump (ESC/P) file; prn file render & bitmap extract on Win. Final image and code © BetaSoft - Beta Basic Newsletter No.10
DXf7V64X0AERAcd.jpg


DXf7SDBXkAAzRwv.jpg


P.S. HiSoft was quite good, I must admit.
 
Zare said:
Yup I started with PC and didn't have the khm privilege of working with 8 bit micros :D

My Olivetti XT machine (1986) was actually great for programming as it used 640x400 resolution with a 8x16 font (IBM standard is 640x200 with 8x8) and had a hard drive.

On Spectrum that's a line editor right? So it's worse than C64.

I guess it doesn't go much worse than that. Punch cards I suppose.
Click to expand...
Wow, 640x400 in pre-VGA? That’s great! IDK about that, thanks! Do you know which video card was in?

I honestly thought that Amstrad PC 1640 was one of the best PC's in that regard with enhanced EGA 640 x 350 and mono Hercules 720 x 350 – it was great for GEM, esp. Ventura.
 
lost_in_c said:
... How did people use to make programming work on a single screen with a single running process?
Click to expand...
`ctags` makes life so much easier.
`gf` (go to file is also a nice tool.
... along with~42 other neat things ...
In Vim I, personally, use things like:
Code: 
function! SearchCword(tag, ...) "{{{
  " This function allows me to preform a search for a word under the
  " cursor in all the files found in and under the current directory.
  "
  " Adopted (revised) from: [ http://ifacethoughts.net/2008/05/11/task-management-using-vim/ ]
  "
  exe "cd %:p:h"
  let path=fnamemodify(expand(getcwd()), ":p") . "*.*"

  try
      exec "noautocmd lvimgrep /" . a:tag . "/j " . path
  catch /^Vim(\a\+):E480:/
  endtry

  if a:0 > 0
      " These commands will add results to the location list.
          try
              exec "noautocmd lvimgrepadd /" . "/\<\%[[[]0[]]]" . a:tag . "\>" . "/j " . path
          catch /^Vim(\a\+):E480:/
          endtry
  endif

   exec "lw"
"    set modifiable
"    open lwindow
endfunction "}}}
function! GetCword()            "{{{
        let wordUnderCursor = expand("<cword>")
        " let currentLine   = getline(".")
        return wordUnderCursor
endfunction     "}}}
" Map <Ctrl-k> to preform the search and create a command for it.
nmap <silent><buffer> <C-k> SearchCword
vmap <silent><buffer> <C-k> SearchCword
nnoremap <silent><script><buffer> SearchCword :SearchCword<CR>
command! -buffer -range SearchCword call SearchCword(GetCword())
 
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