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Comment by akie | Hacker News Reader

Oh please, here we go again. Stop advocating your love for that 30 year-old piece of software. Please. Stop it. You don't hear ME expressing my love for Eclipse on a daily basis, now do you? Seems like you have some convincing to do?

Plus, I'm not buying it. If it's so great, why do you even have to market it? Wouldn't it just sell itself? But no. Instead we get these "VI is great" vs "Emacs is better" discussions every-f*cking-time. And I've had it. Just use your old, old, old piece of software, be happy about, and stop trying to convince me.

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If it's so great, why do you even have to market it?

That's kinda silly. That's like saying "why does Apple spend jillions of dollars marketing the iPhone if it's so great?" Some people genuinely don't know about [pick your editor], and some people like their tools so much, they like to tell you about them. Isn't that the whole point of blogs, anyway?

> "why does Apple spend jillions of dollars marketing the iPhone if it's so great?"

Because it leads to massive profit. I don't think it's pure altruism motivated by a desire to give better user experiences.

It's not just about the money, though. How is free/open source supposed to gain traction, if not by people saying "hey, this is good!" If no one "markets" a piece of software, how you know about? How did _you_ find out about the tools you use?

Agreed, but I was just pointing out a clear non-sequitur in the parent post. People should use logic when making a point.

i, too, am a very happy long time (13+ years) vi/vim user. if you haven't ever used a powerful keyboard-only text editor such as vim or emacs, you simply have no idea what you've been missing.

quit being a curmudgeon. this is one happy human sharing something they love with others. if you don't want any of it, just keep moving. your negativity does not advance the human condition.

Or is it that if you spend 13+ years with any tool, you get very intimate and familiar with it, learn to appreciate its strengths, and don't have an objective view anymore as to the weaknesses. (Especially weaknesses during the first year when you weren't a master.)

I guess to compare, you'd have to have used an IDE with GUI for 13 years too? I bet you'd be very effective that way too.

If you spend that long with a tool, you certainly push out and find the weaknesses

Why are you being so ageist? Old software is the stuff that's grizzled and survived all comers. It's the stuff that people like enough to drag along with them into the future porting to new architectures, operating systems, windowing systems as they go. Not because some company wants to push it but just because it really is that good.

If it's so great, why do you even have to market it? Wouldn't it just sell itself?

Countering this is a common meme in HN articles - that you can't just write some polished software in a room somewhere and expect people to beat a path to your door for it.

I believe the reason it comes up so often is because the depth of the software. I'm just starting, but from what I have been told there is a ton of things to learn, and its hard to know where to go after the first tutorial or two.

Yes Vim was started a long time ago (1991), that means that it has had that bit longer to refine. Eclipse is great too, and people do say so. Add Vim to Eclipse and you can have the best of both.

Don't like it? Don't use it.

Others, who basically edit text for a living, like to explore their options.

You don't rant at every ad you see, do you?

Ok, I would have expected to be downvoted. Dissent on VI vs Emacs is not tolerated among Computer Scientist (and I'm one myself).

Nope, I don't think the downvoting came from dissent, it came from you shitting on other people contributing helpful technical documentation while adding no value of your own.

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