vi vs emacs in a student environment

[Badri Lokanathan]

In article <59699 at sun.uucp>, guy at gorodish.Sun.COM (Guy Harris) writes:
> 
> Your favorite feature of editor A may be of no consequence to some user of
> editor B.  Your favorite gripe against editor B may not represent a problem to
> that user either.
> 
> Unless 1) somebody has good ergonomic evidence showing that for a large
> majority of the users tested, some particular editor really *is* easier to use,
> 2) the users tested represent a good cross-section of the *entire* potential
> user population, and 3) that particular editor is *so* much better that it's
> worth the time that users of all other editors would spend learning it (and 4)
> that this editor is reasonably broadly available), few if any of these articles
> have much point.
> 
> Can we please choke off the debate now?

Guy Harris, Chris Torek and several others have pointed out the
futility of this religious war of editors. Guy has made several
important points here, to which I would like to add a few.

The purpose of any editor is to enter text and make modifications
with relative ease. A rough measure of how good an editor is can be
obtained by comparing the overhead of additional keystrokes for commands.
Most editors that I have worked with have pluses and minuses here; I stick
to the one that I am most comfortable with, simply because I do not think
my productivity can go up in any way by switching to another editor.
If my editor does not perform any special task that I want it to, I find
a temporary alternative.

The rudiments of most editors that are commercially available can be learnt
within a day (it may take just a little longer to remember all features.)
After that, a single page in shorthand notation to remind users of infrequently
used features is all that is required for efficient use. By the end
of a week, a regular user should remember most of the commonly used commands.

My suggestion to the person who wanted a standard editor for a course:
it really is not necessary. Let students try out both vi and emacs and use
the one that they like. Experimentation is part of the learning process.
-- 
"It's better to burn out               {) badri at valhalla.ee.rochester.edu
 Than it is to rust-                  //\\ {ames,cmcl2,columbia,cornell,
 But I'll corrode                    ///\\\ garp,harvard,ll-xn,rutgers}!
 Till I turn to dust."                _||_   rochester!ur-valhalla!badri