[TUHS] Re: End of an era: the last ATC (USENIX Annual Technical Conference)

On Fri, Jul 18, 2025 at 3:43 PM Larry McVoy &lt;lm(a)mcvoy.com&gt; wrote: When Keith ensured that everything in what would lead to the NET2 release was free of any AT&T IP, since the vi command was added to ex, which had originated as ed on the Sixth Edition, it had to be replaced. FWIW: Your observation about modern tools doing more stuff cuts both ways. Sometimes that's nice. As much as I miss the simplicity of the Seventh Edition, I'd not want to trade my Mac for it. But as Rob once observed, cat -v is not necessary and many of the "stuff" you mention has little value. I suspect that every feature in vim is found to be helpful>>somebody<< but I >>suspect<< that few people need, much less use all the features, and as importantly, as with cat -v, there are often simpler solutions for many of these features. Just because it has them does not necessarily mean it matters. My take, the >>one<< feature Vim has for me is MacVIM, which is better integrated into my Mac, but other than that, my .exrc file, like yours, is 40+ years old, and most of how I use it, nvi would work.