Tell HN: I'm sick of reading about text editors. | Hacker News Reader

Tell HN: I'm sick of reading about text editors.

19 pointsspudlyo21 comments

HN's obsession with text editors lately has really got on my nerves. Be it TextMate, Vim, Sublime Text2, Emacs, whatever, I'm sick of people talking about text editors and how they have or haven't changed their lives. There are good reasons to pick any of the above editors, so please pick one, use it, and shut up about it already.

Text editing is one of the most basic and common things that technology professionals do, and to spend so much time anguishing over the decision of what tool to use is a kind of bikeshedding that to me feels beneath HN.

View on HN

Given the option between text editor talk and TechCrunch reposts, I'll take the editor posts every single day.

I love when HN is about making stuff, instead of yapping about Apple or Google or MS. People talking about their tools is great, even when it's well-trodden ground.

I think text-editing is yet to be disrupted. Having so much discussion about it on HN shows that there's some sort of frustration. I'm a ten years emacs user and recently converted vim addict and I'm coding my own web-based text-editing solution based on Ace because I think text-editing is maybe not broken but way below what it could be. So as far as I'm concerned I believe these discussions are very important!

"Lately"? Text editor holy-wars have been a fundamental part of geek discourse dating back to the very earliest days of the internet, and probably before. And it's probably not going to go away any time soon, either.

I loves me a good editor war. There's something deeply satisfying about finding someone with devoted but contrary beliefs about something ultimately trivial (like text editors) and then ridiculing them mercilessly over a few beers.

But this isn't a forum for that.

Given I (and most HN readers) spend a not insubstantial fraction of my waking hours in front of a text editor, I don't think I'd call them trivial - which is why editor wars won't be going away any time soon. Keeping a sense of humour - and ridiculing our emacs-using peers over a beer or two - is a good thing, but that shouldn't mean we think of text editors as being trivial.

I'm saying that it's trivial as "news". If vim releases 7.4 or someone writes a life-altering plugin then I absolutely would love to see that posted here.

Another "I found $editor and now I work slightly faster" post is pretty pointless.

This holds for pretty much anything though, I expect to see new things or old things used in new ways on HN.

I could be doing it wrong though.

What? Hacker News? The "sound a keyboard makes your you're programming furiously in a text editor"-er News? I think you're a little confused about who reads this site.

I think most of us care immensely about our text editors, and specifically how they can be as efficient as possible so we can spend as little time in them as possible and get back to reading Hacker News.

Maybe I am confused who reads that site. Apparently it's teeming with larval stage hackers who haven't yet figured out how they want to write text to files.

I would say HN has expanded in the type of readers. I enjoy a good discussion about text editors, and have enjoyed the ones about _TEXT_EDITOR_, but I do not recall any of those text editors posts resulting in a text editor flame war. If _TEXT_EDITOR_ is not your thing, nor is picking which text editor is the best, just skip the articles. I see only 1 text editor post on the front page right now. I only recall seeing 5 articles on text editors the last few days.

tl;dr I like _TEXT_EDITOR_ but skip the articles if you don't care about how you flip your bits.

Stop polluting the second page with rants against text editors and build us a new standing desk instead, please. ;-)

Sublime Text + Dvorak + Standing Desk = ?

Haha. Ranting on the second page is cheaper than explaining my emacs persecution complex to my therapist.

OKAY so I just started derprogramming and i really don't have anything to show for it, but I do know using VIMACS is hip so lets spend 20seconds googling it and write a blog post about it to make me seem hip and pro. PLEASE READ AND COMMENT HERE: blog.vimacsisbest.com/omgimsoproatvimacs

If HN didn't discuss text editor I would never have found Sublime, which is now by far my favorite editor.

I'm not saying there is never a time and place for editor advocacy, I'm complaining about the frequency. I'm glad you found something that works well for you.

Text editing is something that everyone has a take on. Some want a plain window where they can spill out their thoughts without any interruption, others want all sorts of fancy plugins and shortcuts. Most of these I Love/Hate __TEXTEDITOR__ posts are about what worked for <insert name here> Finding YOUR text editor is one of the easiest ways to increase productivity. And as hackers, I think everyone agrees we NEED to be able to write code as fast as our brains churn em out! :) PS: Vi fanboy here! :D

Programmes have always argued^H^H^H^H^H^Hdiscussed text editors. Used to be just emacs and vi. Now we've added more to the stable. But seriously, if you don't want to read the articles on text editors then don't. No one's making you.

If you're sick of it, can we assume that you found one that works for you? If so, spill the beans.

I agree with the pre-disruption comment. A great text editor makes most of our jobs a lot easier.

Unfortuantely for you, this place is a community and where it goes is not for you or me to decide.

I'm sick of the whole Apple vs MS vs Google vs Nokia business so I don't click. Easy.

It's our community's Ford vs Chevy vs Dodge argument. It's going to come up again and again.

Text editors, the next billion dollar business.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com