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Comment by lynx23 | Hacker News Reader

Nano is the first thing I apt remove upon installing a new Debian box. Yes, I could use update-alternatives to make it non-default, but better uninstall the damn thing so that nobody can hurt themselves...

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How do you even hurt yourself with something that has on-screen help?

When people don't know what ^X means - it's Linux, most tools are very specific of flags and the order in which you put them on the command line.

So is nano saying

- SHIFT-[6](^)-SHIFT-X

- SHIFT-[6](^)-x

- CTRL-[6](^)-SHIFT-X

- CTRL-[6](^)-x

All I see is '^X', on my keyboard '^' is on 6. Why the hell isn't this working?

Little does little Sally know that this is a UNIXism, carat means 'CTRL', X is really just 'x' - but how would Sally know? Sally was just trying to do a simple git commit to get used to using Linux in the first place. Is it little Sally's fault for not knowing? No! Will little Sally have a bad taste in her mouth due to using an unfamiliar tool? Yes. And there you go, little Sally has went on back to Windows. -1 user.

If our protagonist is familiar with macOS, as is far from impossible, they may be less confused by the ^ prefix, which in macOS means Ctrl: https://support.apple.com/en-gb/guide/mac-help/cpmh0011/mac

>All I see is '^X', on my keyboard '^' is on 6.

Fair. Have to say though if you just invoke `nano` (that is nano isn't opened with a file) there's a tooltip saying check 'Ctrl-G' which explains that ^ is Ctrl and M- is Alt.

Is there a particular reason why you seem to imply that little knowledge == female? Sometimes the meme of "we need to mention girls more" works in unexpected directions if people are not careful.

If gender of hypothetical example persons is selected at random you'd expect a 50/50 ratio. Perhaps this example just happens to fall into the 50% that happen to be female?

There is no reason to assume the worst. It only detracts from the discussion.

Sally is a quranic boy and girl name. Is there any particular reason why you seem to imply that the the comment above mentioned a female? There’s no indication of gender.

Because Harry.

I think you're overly sensitive about things that aren't there

Okay..

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