vi vs emacs in a student environment

[Mitchell Wyle]

In article <1559 at edison.GE.COM> rja at edison.GE.COM (rja) writes:
>Here at work we have one version of emacs (ie; microEMACS) running on our
>VMS cluster, our UNIX VAX, and also on the IBM ATs.  What is nice about it
>is being able to use the same editor and key binding files on all 3 systems.
>Counting other emacs variants, I suspect that you can get it for almost
>any machine ( I've used it on a Prime x50 and PDP-11 as well).  
>According to the microEMACS 3.9i manual sitting here, it is also available
>for Atari ST, Amiga, and the Apple Macintosh.

And it would be great if each of the vendors mentioned supported that
particular delicious flavor of an admittedly great, editor microEMACS.

Unfortunately, vi is supported on all of the unix boxes around here,
including the crays, suns, sequent, convex, ATs, mac-IIs-A/UX,
microvax-2000s, etc.

Since there were lots of e-mail responses asking for 'em, here are my
11 reasons for prefering vi to emacs.  Flames, other opinions, and
emacs system administration help :-) are all welcome.

Why Mitch (wyle at solaris.uucp) uses vi:

1)  Availability:  vi(1) is available on every unix box I touch.  I don't
    have to INSTALL it FIRST!!
2)  Support:  vi(1) is supported by the VENDOR of the boxes I manage.
3)  Consistency: All vi(1) implementations I've touched are consistent in
    user-interface, command syntax, cursor movement, ...
4)  Speed:  vi(1) starts running faster.
5)  Safety: vi(1) journals, recovers automagically after a system crash.
6)  Size: vi(1) is small, comes with the OS, needs no extra disk space.
7)  Management:  vi(1) needs NO system management effort. ***
8)  Macros: vi(1) has a simple, powerful macro language not requiring
    the user to know and love LISP.
9)  Terminal support: vi(1) will run on any terminal, including paper
    teletypes.  It needs no windows, graphics, or special features.
    The configuration of Unipress emacs here can't work with an adm3a.
    vi has special environments for low baud rates.
10) Bug-free operation: vi(1) does not leave zombie processes, open a
    window on the console when you're remotely logged in, leave a user
    in your login directory after you log out, leave garbage backup
    files around, dump core, etc. as some delicious flavors of emacs do.
11) Inertia:  I've used vi(1) for a few years, have built up a large
    family of macros for shell-script programming, troff text, and modula-2.
    With continued commitment from vendors for support, why change?
-- 
-Mitchell F. Wyle            wyle at ethz.uucp
Institut fuer Informatik     wyle%ifi.ethz.ch at relay.cs.net
ETH Zentrum                  
8092 Zuerich, Switzerland    +41 1 256-5237