vi vs emacs in a student environment

[Fred Fish]

In article <6056 at megaron.arizona.edu> lm at megaron.arizona.edu (Larry McVoy) writes:
>As a consultant I'll volunteer the following advice:  don't get people used to
>emacs.  Please.  Why?  Because emacs is available on "some" unix machines.  
>Vi is available on almost all unix machines.  Old habits die hard, so I think
>it's better to start people out with something they can stay with...

Until recently you could use almost exactly the same argument for NOT teaching
vi, since vi was ONLY available on Unix systems, while some EMACS or workalike
was available on almost any OS.  Now there are reasonable vi clones for many 
of the more commonly used systems, so I don't think the "people portability"
factor is quite as onesided towards EMACS as it once was.  There are also
enough EMACS's available in source form (GNU, microemacs, jove, scame, mg,
etc) that any EMACS addict that has to work for any length of time on a given
Unix system will find some way to get one installed and thus avoid having
to use vi.

-Fred


-- 
# Fred Fish, 1346 West 10th Place, Tempe, AZ 85281,  USA
# noao!nud!fishpond!fnf                   (602) 921-1113