It’s because my job involves managing and operating systems that are only accessible through ssh or tty sessions. I spend hours every day in a terminal, on a remote session, frequently editing files for stuff: crontabs, configs, etc.

I learned vi because when I was coming up, university systems only had ed, vi and emacs, with pico on the servers that had pine for email. I learned vi because it was more powerful than pico (and because I couldn’t get the hang of emacs key combos). I read the help files and learned how to use it, because it was foundational.

Every Unix-like system has a variant of vi. Many of my container images don’t, but it’s trivial to install and use anywhere if needed.

It’s just a more powerful tool than nano, and consequently more difficult to use. Which is fine, man. It’s okay for you to use a basic text editor on the rare occasion you have to edit something in a terminal. You don’t have cause to learn how to be productive in an advanced editor, and that’s fine.

For what it’s worth, when I’m writing and testing python, I use VS Code.

See, you’ve realized your blunder, now. Tell us what editor you use in the terminal, ReCursing, the one that is better than vim. We’d love to know.

What’s the superior choice to vim, then?

Stockholm Syndrome was never real, it was made up to explain a situation where hostages recognized an injustice and refused to perpetuate it, so cops called them crazy. So sure, if you call me crazy for my affection for a tool that has served me well for decades, I’ll consider you a cop.

I use VS Code on the desktop nowadays, but vi will always be my editor of choice in a terminal. Many of the reasons it was powerful and ubiquitous 30 years ago are still valid, so it’s still powerful and ubiquitous. And I’ve been using it for thirty years, so why would I switch to a training-wheels editor?

Get a good dehumidifier with a drain hose option so that you don’t have to keep emptying the tank. It will produce some heat, so placement is important, but it will pull moisture from the air more efficiently than the AC and that will improve the cooling.

You don’t understand that I don’t believe these clowns are capable of doing either?

“Yes, we keep setting fires in the attic and flooding the basement. We don’t know how to stop that from happening. However, ignoring that, Carl, we are pretty sure we can figure out how to build a skyscraper across the street. And hey, if we screw it up, it’ll be across the street, not in the attic or the basement, which are still on fire and flooded. We might even figure out how to fix those by working on the skyscraper, maybe, you don’t know.”

Some people live in a lovely old rambling mansion with a busted HVAC system stuck on full blast sometimes, fires breaking out in the northwest and west wings all the time, and rising damp from a basement full of water seven feet deep and rising, but they think they should start building a new skyscraper on the empty lot across the street.

Before you claim to be able to build me a new house, let’s see if you can paint my shed.

Before anybody can realistically claim that we can radically change the environment and climate on Mars, let’s see them stop climate change on earth.

It’s “zed” because Brits know that it came from “zeta,” which has no “d” in it. That’s also why they don’t say “ay bee see dee eee eff jee”, they say “al bed cam del epp dye gam.”

“I didn’t really relate to that song, y’know, because I had different things in my Jeep, than he had in his Jeep.”

You want somebody to prove that Russia doesn’t have the capacity to produce their own ball bearings? May I direct you to the article?

Pictures of space are photoshopped, as is the giant photo of space that the scientists have pasted upon the firmament to fool you.

That’s a crappie measurement

Please somebody find the video

Bash isn’t the only shell. Most systems can use zsh or fish or tcsh or whatever shell you prefer, if you like that better than bash. You’re gonna have to run a shell if you want to use the terminal, though, you understand that?

Shell scripts are very good for specific tasks. Don’t use them for tasks that are unsuitable. Use python or go or node or c if those are better for your needs. Use the right tool for the job. But also, learn to understand why the industry has been using shell scripts for decades.