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And to think I was expecting a paean to ed...

I was too. Not having used ed by necessity since a hilariously bad upgrade from Solaris 7 to 9 left me without a compiler in ... 2001?, I'd argue that line editing is most definitely a lost art.

Oh, come on, a book by a well-known author was released last year [1], there is a lively Twitter account [2] and... I personally use it almost daily for some task or another. I wish there was a Ubuntu package for the line mode browser of yore [3]... though I admit I wouldn't use it almost daily!

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Ed-Mastery-Standard-Unix-Editor/dp/16...

[2] https://twitter.com/ed1conf

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Line_Mode_Browser

Me too!

The two essays the author mentions but doesn't link to:

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2005/aug/06/featuresreview...

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2011/feb/11/lost-art-editi...

I don't think it's a lost art, but it might be a lost profession.

I can't imagine the sequence of events between my current life, and a life as even a part-time line editor.

I thought this article was going to be about GNU ed.

Is Line Editing a Lost Art?