vi isn’t a text editor as much as it’s a text manipulation language.
It has a syntax, grammar, idioms, and, yes, a learning curve.
But once you learn it, it’s as close to a brain-computer interface as I’ve experienced. You start thinking about edits as chainable operations and it literally becomes muscle memory – if you ask someone experienced with vi how they just did a complex sequence of edits, chances are they’ll have to stop and consciously walk through it because they literally didn’t have to think about it the first time.
vi isn’t a text editor as much as it’s a text manipulation language.
It has a syntax, grammar, idioms, and, yes, a learning curve.
But once you learn it, it’s as close to a brain-computer interface as I’ve experienced. You start thinking about edits as chainable operations and it literally becomes muscle memory – if you ask someone experienced with vi how they just did a complex sequence of edits, chances are they’ll have to stop and consciously walk through it because they literally didn’t have to think about it the first time.