[COFF] editor wars

[Warner Losh]

On Sun, Jul 20, 2025 at 9:43 AM Paul Winalski <paul.winalski at gmail.com> wrote:
> So Pournelle got Usenet access.  His professional scientific training was in operations research and human factors, so it wasn't long before he discovered the Human Factors Usenet group.  The HF group was in the middle of a particularly viscous vi vs. emacs flame war at the time.  Pournelle stuck his nose in and posted that his editor of preference was Electric Pencil.  This triggered a discussion about Pournelle, along the lines of:  "Who is this bozo?"  "He's Jerry Pournelle, the lousy SF writer who thinks he knows something about computers."  Both sides of the editor flame war dropped their differences and started flaming Pournelle.  I don't recall ever seeing Pournelle post on Usenet again.

The more things change... You could tell the same store today about
Discord, forums, etc.

Warner