I’m trying out Obsidian for taking notes, and this made me laugh.

    • SatanicNotMessianic@lemmy.ml
      121·
      1 year ago

      One of my first computer jobs was working in a student computer lab at my undergraduate university. This was back in the mid 90s-ish.

      We had three types of computers - windows machines running 3.1 or whatever was current then, Macs who would all do a Wild Eep together when they rebooted en masse, and Sun X Windows dumb terminals that were basically just (obviously) unix machines for all intents and purposes. This was back when there were basically like 5 websites total, and people still hadn’t heard of Mosaic.

      So everyone wanted the windows and Mac boxes, and only took the xterms when there was nothing else open. I was the primary support person for them since none of the other people wanted to learn Unix and I was the only CS major.

      The X boxes suffered from two main learning hurdles. One was that backspaces were incorrectly mapped into some escape key sequence, and the other is that it would drop you from (I think) pine into emacs as a mail editor as soon as you hit it. 90% of my time was telling people how to exit emacs. It was that, putting more paper into the printers, and teaching myself more programming than I was learning in classes.

      • modeler@lemmy.world
        40·
        1 year ago

        My god that brought back memories. The first commands when sitting at a new terminal was always, always:

        stty sane

        stty erase '^H'

        It was well into the 2000s before Unix had useable defaults.

      • lolcatnip@reddthat.comEnglish
        5·
        1 year ago

        God, I remember the backspace thing. I hope whoever allowed a computer to be shipped in that condition got fired.

    • folkrav@lemmy.world
      1191·
      1 year ago

      It’s hard to hate nano, but IMHO there also isn’t anything to like in particular either. It’s basically a TUI notepad. It’s there, it lets people edit files… and that’s pretty much all there is to it.

      • killeronthecorner@lemmy.worldEnglish
        141·
        1 year ago

        You can use nano without having to read anything about nano. That might be the only thing that is better about it than vim, but it’s a damn important thing.

        • nautilus@lemmy.dbzer0.com
          66·
          1 year ago

          I have zero patience when trying to make small adjustments to files, which is what my command line text editor should be for. Nano just has everything at the bottom in case you forget (I do, frequently) so the workflow is ridiculously streamlined for me

                • bpm@lemmy.ml
                  2·
                  1 year ago

                  yy to copy, dd to cut, p to paste. Need to move 5 lines at once? No problem, move to the first line and use d5d, and p to paste it. Vim gets a bad rap for being confusing, but it’s so fast to move text around once you get the hang of it.

      • Alien Nathan Edward@lemm.ee
        32·
        1 year ago

        it’s basically a TUI notepad. It’s there, it does one job and that’s all there is to it

        That’s what the people who like it like about it.

    • marduk@lemmy.sdf.org
      50·
      1 year ago

      I like nano because it has worked any time I needed it. I don’t dislike nano because I’m not good enough at Linux to have ever run into its limitations

      • bioemerl@kbin.social
        306·
        1 year ago

        Vim really is an IDE, not a text editor. It’s usable as an editor but overkill.

        Nano serves a difference purpose. It’s like telling someone on a bike that a mustang is better.

        • Kogasa@programming.dev
          294·
          1 year ago

          Vim is absolutely not an IDE. It has no integrations with any language. It’s just a powerful text editor. You can add language plugins and configure it to be an IDE.

          • hperrin@lemmy.world
            182·
            1 year ago

            That’s what most IDEs are. VS Code doesn’t have any native integrations. Everything is provided by plugins. The default plugins that ship with VS Code can be disabled, and you’ll have just a powerful text editor.

            (To do this, go to Extensions tab, click the filter icon, select “Built-in”, and go down the list to disable all of them. Or just build a version with no built-in plugins.)

              • bioemerl@kbin.social
                74·
                1 year ago

                In that case every IDE is “just a text editor” because basically every IDE is built around modularity in this same way. This is just nitpicking over what is preinstalled.

                • Fushuan [he/him]@lemm.eeEnglish
                  71·
                  1 year ago

                  Eclipse, visual studio, pycharm, idea… Those are full blown IDEs. They come with all the extras. All the text editors that can become IDEs have extensions or plugins that enable what these other actual IDE do natively.

                  Nowadays using vscode to debug a running program is common, but that was something only restricted to full blown IDEs some years ago, I’d say that vscode is lightweight IDE that can be expanded, but vim is a text editor first and foremost. You can’t really debug code in vim AFAIK, the most you get is syntax highlighting, linting, automatic whitespace removal and auto formatting? Not sure about the last one.

                • Lime66@lemmy.world
                  2·
                  1 year ago

                  You cannot remove java from idea. Therefore it is not just a text editor because support for the language isn’t added through an extension

                • Kogasa@programming.dev
                  32·
                  1 year ago

                  IDEs are designed to support a software development workload. A text editor is designed to edit text files.

            • DrQuint@lemm.ee
              32·
              1 year ago

              Ah, so Code is the same as Vim if… I go out of my way to either disable things on one or install things on the other.

              Or… Or… Code is an IDE (that you can strip down) and Vim is a text editor (that you can strip up).

              We don’t stop calling a computer one just because it can still boot without most of its modules. The default presentation matters.

          • Bo7a@lemmy.ca
            136·
            1 year ago

            No offense intended here - But why is this being upvoted?

            vim absolutely is an IDE if that is how you want to use it. Syntax highlighting, linter, language specific autocomplete, integrated sed/regex. And much, much more.

              • bioemerl@kbin.social
                91·
                1 year ago

                “You see here my car has positions for all the parts of a boat so it’s easily made into a boat and it’s already waterproof but it’s just a normal car”

            • Kogasa@programming.dev
              8·
              1 year ago

              Syntax highlighting, linting, and language specific autocomplete are features supported by plugins and scripts. Plain, simple vim is a powerful extensible text editor. The extensibility makes it easy to turn into an IDE.

                • Kogasa@programming.dev
                  4·
                  1 year ago

                  Yeah, there is a generic syntax highlighting scheme. I had forgotten because it’s not very good for some languages, I’d replaced it with a LSP-based implementation years ago.

            • killeronthecorner@lemmy.worldEnglish
              8·
              1 year ago

              The things you’re describing are still just text editor features. An IDE generally has specific functionality for building, testing, packaging, debugging etc. for one or more programming languages/environments.

              (Which vim can do if configured, I don’t really have an opinion about that tbh)

                • Kogasa@programming.dev
                  5·
                  1 year ago

                  I’m not a text editor. But anyway, would you call a shell script that invokes python.exe $1 a Python IDE? Why would you? Vim isn’t designed to facilitate the use of vimscript, vimscript is just an extensibility feature of Vim.

          • Frank Müller@mastodon.social
            12·
            1 year ago

            @kogasa Hehe, shit, so long done something wrong as I use #vim as an IDE. Okay, some own helpers, some plugins, the direct integration for #golang via LSP and since some time also ChatGPT and Copilot. But hey, it’s no IDE. 🤪

        • Slotos@feddit.nl
          10·
          1 year ago

          Nano is for those that occasionally edit text files from a terminal.

          Vim is for those who make a living out of it.

          • bioemerl@kbin.social
            51·
            1 year ago

            Not really, or that doesn’t feel right to my. Word and notepad basically still do the same thing except for that word lets you add style.

            Like a manual vs an automatic car, maybe?

            • frezik@midwest.social
              8·
              1 year ago

              Word is a WYSIWYG editor. We don’t talk about it much these days because it’s just how things are done, but it took a long time for the industry to come up with a way to display text on screen with rich formatting and have it come out the same way in print. There was a lot of buzz around it in the late 80s and early 90s.

              Word solves a completely different problem than an IDE. Notepad is a raw, minimal tool that could be built on for either WYSIWYG or an IDE.

        • nautilus@lemmy.dbzer0.com
          5·
          1 year ago

          I’ll level with you: I’m kind of a moron.

          If my command line text editor has its own bespoke integrated command line, then science has gone too far and we need to stop lmao

        • penquin@lemm.ee
          2·
          1 year ago

          I’m struggling to see the connection here. I guess I don’t need to fiddle with the mechanical pencil, it breaks very quickly? I don’t want to go through changing those little sticks? Graphite pencil only needs to be sharpened? So, you’re supporting using Nano? I’m a little confused

          • folkrav@lemmy.world
            2·
            1 year ago

            Yet many people prefer mechanical pencils. Are you against choice? What is there to get or “need”?

      • uzay@infosec.pub
        6·
        1 year ago

        It just makes a lot of stuff way easier once you know how to use it. Switching out a word for another: two button-presses, duplicating a line: three presses, deleting 500 consecutive lines: five presses

            • nickwitha_k (he/him)@lemmy.sdf.org
              1·
              1 year ago

              How do we work this? Do we alternate between trying to ruin people’s lives with elisp and chasing the perfect .vimrc or lua - config? Maybe grab some bytes from /dev/urandom and send them to the editor whose first letter comes up first? What about holidays?

        • penquin@lemm.ee
          1·
          1 year ago

          But you can do all that with nano and it is straight forward and you don’t need to memorize any key combinations. I mean, I get it and no judgement here. I just use nano because it’s easy and quick.

          • r1veRRR@feddit.de
            1·
            1 year ago

            You can also copy paste by manually copying text by hand, would call that a valid alternative to Ctrl-C/V?

      • r1veRRR@feddit.de
        2·
        1 year ago

        I don’t understand the need for Ctrl-C/V, when manually copying the text exists. I know it’s snarky, but that’s the level of difference we’re talking about here. Or imagine, to delete a line, someone Right Arrows 50 times, then backspaces 50 times, instead of using the shortcut.

    • locuester@lemmy.zipEnglish
      24·
      1 year ago

      nano gang checking in.

      However, I’ve been forced over time to remember “:wq” to get unstuck should vim randomly appear.

    • affiliate@lemmy.world
      4·
      1 year ago

      i’ve only ever used nano in the early stages of a gentoo install, when it’s too early to install vim and import my dot files 😈

    • XEAL@lemm.ee
      52·
      1 year ago

      Here!

      I hate terminal-based text editors

      Nano seems quite user/idiot friendly

      • Troz@sh.itjust.works
        2·
        3 months ago

        I made that switch a few months ago just so I could cut, copy and paste without having to lookup how to do it. it’s been great.

  • psud@aussie.zone
    824·
    1 year ago

    If anyone needs the command: :q!

    If you want the computer to ask if you’re sure: :q

    If you want to save: :wq

  • rtxn@lemmy.worldEnglish
    818·
    1 year ago

    I don’t mean to be all “BuT iT’s cLOseD SoURce” but you should give Logseq or Zettlr a try. They’re similar WYSIWYG markdown editors, but also FOSS. Zettlr also has vim keys.

    Plus Obsidian is horrible at editing tables.

    • doeknius_gloek@feddit.de
      45·
      1 year ago

      Also not a fan about the closed source thing, but I like about Obsidian that it’s all just markdown. If I ever need to ditch it, I can keep and use my existing files as they are.

      Would this also be possible with Zettlr or Logseq?

      • sanpo@sopuli.xyz
        13·
        1 year ago

        Exactly, that and the mobile app. Having simple markdown files and ability to sync them with Syncthing are just too good.

      • Zak8022@lemm.ee
        9·
        1 year ago

        I don’t know about Zettlr, but last I looked at Logseq it worked off markdown files similar to Obsidian.

        That said, I felt Logseq wasn’t quite ready for prime time when I was doing my research a year or so ago. So I went with Obsidian and have been very happy with it.

      • drh@lemmy.world
        0·
        1 year ago

        Been using Logseq for six months, and yes. It’s all just .md and media files referenced by relative links.

        This was an important factor the choice to use it. Having used several note taking applications / systems, getting your data ‘out’ in a painless fashion is the #1 concern.

    • Jorgelino@lemmy.mlOP
      23·
      1 year ago

      Thanks for the suggestions, I’m actually checking a couple new editors out as i’m looking for an alternative to OneNote. Just started messing with this one, but i’m not sure if i’ll settle for it yet.

      • hperrin@lemmy.world
        291·
        1 year ago

        There’s nothing there that really strikes me as disingenuous or bad. If they wanna be closed source, they can be, for whatever reason(s) they want. Does it mean a number of people (me included) are less likely to use it? Yes. But outside of our bubble here, most people don’t care about open vs closed source software.

        • VegaLyrae@kbin.social
          21·
          1 year ago

          There’s nothing disingenuous about that? Did we read the same things?

          Being closed source doesn’t fix any of the issues they noted.

          I’d rather they just say “I’m ashamed of my code”.

          • hperrin@lemmy.world
            4·
            1 year ago
            • Open source doesn’t guarantee safety without specific (and expensive) third party audits.

            This one is debatable. Without expert eyes, open source code doesn’t do much to guarantee safety. Expert eyes aren’t necessarily expensive, but for non-super-popular projects, they are hard to entice. Can you spot a cross site request forgery attack vector at a glance? Have you used open source software without checking for this specific attack vector in all relevant code? So, as stated, this is basically true.

            • Open source doesn’t mean faster development. Code review often takes longer than development.

            This is true. You need those experts from point one to check if contributed code introduces security vulnerabilities. Code is work^2. Work to write and work to review. (Also work to maintain, so work^3, but whatever.)

            • Open source projects don’t last forever.

            This seems false, but is phrased super oddly. I mean, nothing lasts forever, so sure, but open source code is essentially available for as long as someone is interested in it enough to preserve it, so I would generally disagree.

            • Open source requires a lot of extra effort, and the developers would rather put that effort into the app itself.

            This is unambiguously true. I maintain several fairly popular open source libraries, and they take work. I also see the benefit in maintaining them as open source projects, but that is my own discretion, as a fan of open source software. If I were more worried about profit, I could definitely see this as a barrier to releasing my code as open source, considering I need to pay those engineers for the work they do just maintaining the project as an open source project.

            This is also not to be confused with a source-available project, where the source code is freely available, but not necessarily under an open source license, which can be much easier to maintain.

      • uzay@infosec.pub
        9·
        1 year ago

        I was about to comment that their website also claims “legitimate interest” to create a personalised ad profile on me, before I realised that that is not the official Obsidian website. But yeah, the stated reasons are dumb.

      • candybrie@lemmy.world
        3·
        1 year ago

        It’s extra work they don’t totally see the value in and they want to be able to sell their product? Those seem like pretty normal reasons not to maintain an open source project.

        • VegaLyrae@kbin.social
          1·
          1 year ago

          It is 5 minutes of work to use your source control tool, and have a read only view for other people.

          Being open source doesn’t mean you have to accept PRs or pay for audits. It just means your source is… Open…

          • candybrie@lemmy.world
            1·
            1 year ago

            Even if you don’t accept PRs, you’ll get people who want you to. Having the source open will generate a good amount of support email that is about modifications to your code. People can’t help it.

      • rchive@lemm.ee
        1·
        1 year ago

        They also want to be able to support their families by making money through the Obsidian application, which could be more difficult in an open source environment.

        This is the only one that seems really legit to me. That and the other commenter that said open source is more work, which is probably true, and if you’re not getting benefit it could be a net loss.

    • Einar@lemm.ee
      7·
      1 year ago

      Logseq has an Android app. Zettlr doesn’t.

      Edit: I tested Logseq. It has the basic functionality down, so for many it might be great. For me, though, it doesn’t come close to what is possible with the plugins of Obsidian. So for now I’ll stick with Obsidian.

      • stifle867@programming.dev
        2·
        1 year ago

        The Android app is horrible btw. If I had to guess it’s just a desktop web page scaled down and packaged in an app.

    • DotSlashExecute@feddit.ukEnglish
      6·
      1 year ago

      Coming here to recommend Joplin, been using it for years and it’s a great note app, markdown + external editing supported, open source, CLI & GUI clients, encrypted… Does everything right!

      • Tunawithshoes@lemmy.blahaj.zone
        5·
        1 year ago

        Firstly Joplin is great note taking app and if that is all you want you really should go for it. I used it for years and was really happy.

        But Obsidian is far more than just a note app. It like a Wikipedia page, you can add links within the text of your notes to another note. But they are also bi-directional, meaning you can see the incoming and outgoing links.

        Making easy to use the related notes instead of just link to it. Sometimes you did not even think this note could use that note information and it shows you can connect them.

        Not only that Dataview lets you live index and query your data. Letting me build a template and query that data dynamics.

    • GalacticCmdr@lemmy.world
      3·
      1 year ago

      I tumbled across Zettlr when I was looking at maybe replacing Zim for my homebrew TTRPG games at the table. I use DokuWiki online. I ran my Star Wars game through it. Pretty impressive.

    • airbussy@lemmy.oneEnglish
      2·
      1 year ago

      Zettlr is a great program, but to recommend it while bashing Obsidians table editing seems interesting. I’ve never used Obsidian so I can’t say how good their implementation is, but I know I’ve struggled alot with the Zettlr tables…

    • lost@feddit.de
      1·
      1 year ago

      I would in theory prefer FOSS. But what is the situation with plugins and themes? Can I use obsidian plugins with any of those? If not, I’m probably not gonna switch.

    • Evilschnuff@feddit.de
      21·
      1 year ago

      Would love to but I’m not going to pay a subscription for sync (one time would be ok), or have my data on a random aws instance. And last time I checked there is no plugin for your own self defined sync storage like Nextcloud. Once there is, I’m having a go.

    • aesopjah@lemm.ee
      1·
      1 year ago

      There’s a table edit plug in that makes it easy. The gripe I have with it is not being able to right-justify numbers (or maybe I haven’t looked close enough)

  • psycho_driver@lemmy.world
    68·
    1 year ago

    I mean, it’s true.

    I’ve been using linux pretty exclusively at home for almost 25 years now. Program. Script. Work in the shell a lot, and the other day I had to use vim and it took me a while to remember the basic commands. I’m a nano guy :\

    • DaTingGoBrrr@lemmy.ml
      16·
      1 year ago

      I also started off using nano. Have you tried Micro? It’s like nano on steroids and with good keybindings

      • dan@upvote.au
        11·
        1 year ago

        At some point Nano added Ctrl+S for save. That’s all I needed. Its syntax highlighting is decent too.

      • pascal@lemm.ee
        11·
        1 year ago

        Nano, Pico and Micro? is this editor trying to !compensate for something?

      • flubba86@lemmy.world
        2·
        1 year ago

        +1 for micro. I install it on every server I administer, and alias it to nano. If you’re a nano user and haven’t tried micro, I highly recommend it. It’s like nano, but built this century, it feels fast and modern.

    • gornius@lemmy.world
      171·
      1 year ago

      Honestly, if you work in a shell a lot, learning vim is a great investment. You’re gonna fly through files editing them faster than with any IDE.

    • flop_leash_973@lemmy.world
      15·
      1 year ago

      I’m with you on that. VIM is a good example of a tool that the deepness of the tool makes it aggravating to use for the 90% of simple use cases.

      Unless you use VIM enough for the shortcuts to be second nature it is faster to install Nano, make the changes, and remove Nano than it is to use VIM.

    • BestBouclettes@jlai.lu
      10·
      1 year ago

      If you feel like it definitely give it another go. Vim (or neovim) is just insanely good once you’ve developed the muscle memory for the keybinds.
      It takes a bit of time and practice but it’s actually fairly user friendly once you understand how it works. (c for change, y for yank, p for paste, e for end, b for beginning etc.)

      • Ignotum@lemmy.world
        3·
        1 year ago

        I was a nano person for the longest time, was planning to try out vim but never did, until i saw a coworker using it and he explained a little about the vim “language” actually worked and how much you could do with it

        With some encouragement from him and a week or two of reduced productivity i was able to do everything just as fast in vim as in nano, and it only got better from there, now i find any other editor slow and tiresome in comparison

      • pimeys@lemmy.nauk.io
        2·
        1 year ago

        If you want something that is quite a nice editor too but doesn’t require hundreds of lines of configuration, try helix. It also has nice help menus so it’s fast to learn. I’ve used vim since the 90’s and Emacs for many years, but nowadays I kinda just like hx how it just works with zero configuration for any programming language I need to work with.

  • flop_leash_973@lemmy.world
    471·
    1 year ago

    A lot of my personal dislike for VIM would be done away with if it just had a helpful common keys cheat sheet (basic cursor navigation, edit mode, exit with and without saving, etc) at the bottom of the editor window like Nano does.

    • jayemar@lemm.ee
      131·
      1 year ago

      I understand where you’re coming from, but as a frequent user of vim I’d much rather have the additional line of text.

    • eeleech@lemm.ee
      132·
      1 year ago

      Having the commands listed at the bottom by default is one thing i personally dislike about nano, because they take up space while being useless to someone knowing the commands (or at least knowing how to open the help in, which is what you can do in vim to achieve the cheat sheet). The alternative that vim uses, is to show the commands when starting the editor without opening a file.

    • redempt@lemmy.world
      10·
      1 year ago

      one of my favorite things about helix is how easily you can check the keybinds for certain actions - just space-? and then you can see a list of every command available (by description) and their keybinds, if they have one

    • CatLikeLemming@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
      1·
      6 months ago

      Really, I’d just recommend using nano then. It’s installed basically anywhere you can find vim and works perfectly fine as a text editor! To use vim effectively it has a learning curve no matter what, so it’s not necessarily meant for everyone.

  • Vash63@lemmy.world
    31·
    1 year ago

    There’s a few different ways to write that command in vim, does it accept all of them?

    • Jorgelino@lemmy.mlOP
      16·
      1 year ago

      I’m honestly not super familiar with vim. I tried :q! and it accepted it, what are some other ways?

          • genoxidedev1@kbin.social
            71·
            1 year ago

            Halfway true :3 I’m only a professional programmer which is why I attend in professional work fashion like thigh highs and arm warmers instead of fursuits. I’m more the stereotypical femboy programmer. Pre-edit: am i really just average 3,:

        • Guru_Insights99@lemm.ee
          013·
          1 year ago

          You appear to be in the wrong subreddit (sublemmy?). This is a community based around programmer humor. I recommend you go to the furry sublemmy instead. It is for this reason I have down voted your post today

          • genoxidedev1@kbin.social
            7·
            1 year ago

            I don’t get it. I was pretty much replying with a programming related answer, being “:q”. I only added my personal flair to it, being “:3”. And I only expanded after another person assumed me to be a furry as well.

            If you want me gone because of that, you got to get your priorities out of the gutter, there ain’t none. And fix your stereotypes too. The other person at least replied humorously. You won’t get a “:3” from me. Good day!

          • Purple@lemm.eeEnglish
            3·
            1 year ago

            Buddy where do you think furries get the money for fursuits? They are very expensive (or so I’ve heard) and lots of furries pay for their fursuits with high paying jobs like IT jobs

      • OpenStars@kbin.social
        103·
        1 year ago

        :wq will save and then exit, while :x will save only if the file has been modified and then exit, and then there’s ZZ that does the same as :x, plus there are probably others:-)