[nylug-talk] Poll: What would you like to learn?

[wdg3rd at comcast.net]

From: Sunny Dubey <sunny at opencurve.org>
> I can vividly remember some kids from the ACM club extolling why BSD's vi was 
> superior to Linux's vi.  (BSD kids were always epic fail.)
> 
> In my case I had NYLUG, and the Internet to revel in my learnings and hackery.  
> (Which too was interesting, because I almost never ever ever ever saw 
> students from my school attend a NYLUG meeting.)

Huh?  Never saw any arguments between vi variants.  Yeah, vim and elvis extent vi in slightly different ways, but 99.99% of what I do uses what I started with in 1983 with the Tandy Xenix port of the early Berzerkely code.  I don't even notice the difference between vi variants unless one screws up something old.  A rare event.  Hell, I don't use more than 20% of the original features anyway.

I don't even pay attention to the vi/emacs debate anymore.  Yeah, emacs might be a superior editor.  I don't give a rat's ass anymore.  I'm in my 50s, I'll learn new stuff when I see a detectable advantage.  (Actually, I learn new stuff every day, but I'm kind of set in my ways when it comes to editors -- new and better does not consistently mean more productive -- ask anybody else who had to switch from RealWorld on Unix to Quickbooks on Windoze to do their bookkeeping).  (Yeah, a bad example, since QuickBooks isn't "better", it's just everywhere like "reality" TV).
--
Ward Griffiths    wdg3rd at comcast.net

These histrionics were probably unnecessary, since there was no reason to think anybody would be watching us with more than casual interest until I made my first move to follow Buchanon's trail, in London.  Still, somebody might check back this far later, and I always feel that if you're going to play a part, you might as well play iy all the way, at least in public -- and it's hard to tell what's public and what isn't, these electronic days.
Donald Hamilton, _The Devastators_, 1965