15 May
2018
15 May
'18
12:11 p.m.
I never really learned VI. I can stumbled through it in ex mode if I have
to. If there's no EMACS on the UNIX system I'm using, I use ed.
You get real good at regular expressions. Some of my employees were
pretty amazed at how fast I could make code changes with just ed.
15 May
15 May
2:17 p.m.
"Ron Natalie" <ron(a)ronnatalie.com> wrote:
I never really learned VI. I can stumbled through it
in ex mode if I have
to. If there's no EMACS on the UNIX system I'm using, I use ed.
You get real good at regular expressions. Some of my employees were
pretty amazed at how fast I could make code changes with just ed.
I did learn vi, after having learned ed first. I drop down to the ex
command line for major regexp-based surgery too. I also get the amazement
from co-workers who watch me do stuff. :-) This is particularly true
of the, er, younger coworkers (kids today ... :-) who can't manage
outside an IDE.
Arnold
2:37 p.m.
On Tue, May 15, 2018 at 08:17:38AM -0600, arnold(a)skeeve.com wrote:
"Ron Natalie" <ron(a)ronnatalie.com>
wrote:
In fairness to them, I don't know how you learn the good stuff outside
of a terminal room. I learned so much by watching the screen change
and going "WTF? How did you do that?"
There is only so much you can stuff into a manual.
--
---
Larry McVoy lm at mcvoy.com http://www.mcvoy.com/lm
I never really learned VI. I can stumbled
through it in ex mode if I have
to. If there's no EMACS on the UNIX system I'm using, I use ed.
You get real good at regular expressions. Some of my employees were
pretty amazed at how fast I could make code changes with just ed.
I did learn vi, after having learned ed first. I drop down to the ex
command line for major regexp-based surgery too. I also get the amazement
from co-workers who watch me do stuff. :-) This is particularly true
of the, er, younger coworkers (kids today ... :-) who can't manage
outside an IDE. 
2:47 p.m.
Yeah. We lost that and it was a good thing. Programming became a operation between you
and your computer in the privacy of your own office.
Sent from my PDP-7 Running UNIX V0 expect things to be almost but not quite.
On May 15, 2018, at 10:37 AM, Larry McVoy
<lm(a)mcvoy.com> wrote:
On Tue, May 15, 2018 at 08:17:38AM -0600,
arnold(a)skeeve.com wrote:
"Ron Natalie" <ron(a)ronnatalie.com> wrote:
In fairness to them, I don't know how you learn the good stuff outside
of a terminal room. I learned so much by watching the screen change
and going "WTF? How did you do that?"
There is only so much you can stuff into a manual.
--
---
Larry McVoy lm at mcvoy.com http://www.mcvoy.com/lm
I never really learned VI. I can stumbled
through it in ex mode if I have
to. If there's no EMACS on the UNIX system I'm using, I use ed.
You get real good at regular expressions. Some of my employees were
pretty amazed at how fast I could make code changes with just ed.
I did learn vi, after having learned ed first. I drop down to the ex
command line for major regexp-based surgery too. I also get the amazement
from co-workers who watch me do stuff. :-) This is particularly true
of the, er, younger coworkers (kids today ... :-) who can't manage
outside an IDE. 
3:12 p.m.
Lord knows I learned Unix by watching my peers type it...
In the long run that was both good and bad, though, since now all I get to
see people type are shell scripts which range from brilliant to rubbish...
The only way to know where on that spectrum things are is to read a bunch
of them... and to get burned a few times stealing the techniques that are
best described, in hindsight, as "it seemed like a good idea at the time."
Warner
On Tue, May 15, 2018 at 8:47 AM, Clem cole <clemc(a)ccc.com> wrote:
Yeah. We lost that and it was a good thing.
Programming became a
operation between you and your computer in the privacy of your own office.
Sent from my PDP-7 Running UNIX V0 expect things to be almost but not
quite.
http://www.mcvoy.com/lm
On May 15, 2018, at 10:37 AM, Larry McVoy
<lm(a)mcvoy.com> wrote:
> On Tue, May 15, 2018 at 08:17:38AM -0600, arnold(a)skeeve.com wrote:
> "Ron Natalie" <ron(a)ronnatalie.com> wrote:
>
>> I never really learned VI. I can stumbled through it in ex mode if I
have
>> to. If there's no EMACS on the
UNIX system I'm using, I use ed.
>> You get real good at regular expressions. Some of my employees were
>> pretty amazed at how fast I could make code changes with just ed.
>
> I did learn vi, after having learned ed first. I drop down to the ex
> command line for major regexp-based surgery too. I also get the
amazement
from
co-workers who watch me do stuff. :-) This is particularly true
of the, er, younger coworkers (kids today ... :-) who can't manage
outside an IDE.
In fairness to them, I don't know how you learn the good stuff outside
of a terminal room. I learned so much by watching the screen change
and going "WTF? How did you do that?"
There is only so much you can stuff into a manual.
--
---
Larry McVoy lm at mcvoy.com
3:09 p.m.
In fairness to them, I don't know how you learn
the good stuff outside
of a terminal room. I learned so much by watching the screen change
and going "WTF? How did you do that?"
There is only so much you can stuff into a manual.
Indeed. But this can be taught; however, it seems that many of the
younger generation aren't interested in learning it. As Clem noted,
losing the terminal room has had a negative impact on learning.
(Boy, are we just a bunch of old farts, or what ... :-)
Arnold
3:18 p.m.
On Tue, May 15, 2018 at 09:09:36AM -0600, arnold(a)skeeve.com wrote:
I'm not old, oh, wait. And get off my lawn! :)
--
---
Larry McVoy lm at mcvoy.com http://www.mcvoy.com/lm
In fairness to
them, I don't know how you learn the good stuff outside
of a terminal room. I learned so much by watching the screen change
and going "WTF? How did you do that?"
There is only so much you can stuff into a manual.
Indeed. But this can be taught; however, it seems that many of the
younger generation aren't interested in learning it. As Clem noted,
losing the terminal room has had a negative impact on learning.
(Boy, are we just a bunch of old farts, or what ... :-) 
3:34 p.m.
Larry McVoy writes:
On Tue, May 15, 2018 at 09:09:36AM -0600,
arnold(a)skeeve.com wrote:
I'm not old, oh, wait. And get off my lawn! :)
I have fond memories of the "public terminal" room that was somewhere
on the 4th or 5th floor of building 2 at Murray Hill. Never knew who
you'd run into there.
In
fairness to them, I don't know how you learn the good stuff outside
of a terminal room. I learned so much by watching the screen change
and going "WTF? How did you do that?"
There is only so much you can stuff into a manual.
Indeed. But this can be taught; however, it seems that many of the
younger generation aren't interested in learning it. As Clem noted,
losing the terminal room has had a negative impact on learning.
(Boy, are we just a bunch of old farts, or what ... :-)
4:36 p.m.
On Tue, May 15, 2018 at 9:34 AM, Jon Steinhart <jon(a)fourwinds.com> wrote:
Larry McVoy writes:
I'm not old, oh, wait. And get off my lawn! :)
I have fond memories of the "public terminal" room that was somewhere
on the 4th or 5th floor of building 2 at Murray Hill. Never knew who
you'd run into there.
Even at conferences, the hacking lounges provide only the barest flavor of
what's going on here. Though I still see the cool thing I want to use, it's
often painful to glance over people's shoulders... Some code can't be
unseen :)
Warner
On Tue, May 15, 2018 at 09:09:36AM -0600,
arnold(a)skeeve.com wrote:
> > In fairness to them, I don't know how you learn the good stuff
outside
of a terminal room. I learned so much by watching the
screen change
and going "WTF? How did you do that?"
There is only so much you can stuff into a manual.
Indeed. But this can be taught; however, it seems that many of the
younger generation aren't interested in learning it. As Clem noted,
losing the terminal room has had a negative impact on learning.
(Boy, are we just a bunch of old farts, or what ... :-) 
11:31 p.m.
On Tue, 15 May 2018, Larry McVoy wrote:
Well, I turned 65.5 the other day, and am now looking forward to my first
Age Pension payment; does that make me old?
As for my lawn, I feed the magpies on it every morning :-) I buy meat
especially for them (I'm not much of a carnivore myself, but I do like the
occasional snag).
-- Dave
(Boy, are we
just a bunch of old farts, or what ... :-)
I'm not old, oh, wait. And get off my lawn! :) 
4:54 p.m.
On Tue, May 15, 2018 at 08:11:48AM -0400, Ron Natalie wrote:
I never really learned VI. I can stumbled through it
in ex mode if I have
to. If there's no EMACS on the UNIX system I'm using, I use ed.
You get real good at regular expressions. Some of my employees were
pretty amazed at how fast I could make code changes with just ed.
/bin/ed's commands are mostly the same as the line editing tools that
Dec's PDP-8's 4k disk monitor system, PDP-15 backround/foreground
monitor, and the RT-11's editor. I learned it on my own, from the
manuals only --- and when you are using an teletype, you have a *huge*
amount of incentive to learn all of the tricks you can.
So my choice of editors largely follows Ron; I never really learned
VI, so it's Emacs or ed. And if you're on a ghastly slow
internet-on-an-airplane connection, being able to use ed is a really
useful skill --- it just gives you flashbacks to using a teletype as
an interface.
- Ted
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days inactive
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11 comments
9 participants
participants (9)
-
arnold＠skeeve.com -
Clem cole -
Cág -
Dave Horsfall -
Jon Steinhart -
Larry McVoy -
Ron Natalie -
Theodore Y. Ts'o -
Warner Losh