sixtofour

Vim and Emacs are first and foremost text editors, and they're really, really good at that. Each can do a small bit of passable project management.

IDEs are project managers [1], and they're really, really good at that. They generally have passable editors.

IDEs are built with enough project management to satisfy the immediate needs of 80% of developers, and more can be added through plugins, if you or someone else have built the plugin. That probably gets you to 95% or so of developers' project management needs.

Vim, Emacs and other power editors are built with very few project management tools relative to an IDE (Emacs maybe more than others), but can use plugins. But Vim and Emacs exist within or close to the command line, and from there you have a wealth of almost infinitely composable text and file query and manipulation tools.

For example, relative to your complaint, both editors have significant levels of integration with or implemenation of ctags or its descendants: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ctags

"Ctags is a program that generates an index (or tag) file of names found in source and header files of various programming languages. Depending on the language, functions, variables, class members, macros and so on may be indexed. These tags allow definitions to be quickly and easily located by a text editor or other utility. Alternatively, there is also an output mode that generates a cross reference file, listing information about various names found in a set of language files in human-readable form."

This may not be as out-of-the-box convenient as specifically targeted, belled and whistled IDE implementations of the same functionality, but they are there, they're flexible, and they can be used with or without an editor.

The fundamental difference is excellent project management plus "other," or excellent text manipulation plus "other." I suppose as each side gains more functionality from the other, expectations rise, but it's probably best to remember what each is best at.

[1] By project management I mean from a developer's point of view. How to get at and understand all the code, project-wide.

"Finally, I feel that there's no need to try to lure more Windows users to migrate to Linux. Linux has already passed the threshold of immortality and it will stay alive and well whether it attracts more user from Windows or not."

It would be a great cost savings to the world, in terms of direct money saved as well as indirect incompatibilities, if a significant part of the software using world used Linux and other open products. In other words, it's not just to improve the lot of Linux, it's also to improve (change) the world.

He's probably referring to this, from the article:

"Isn’t it better, less cryptic, and more pythonic? a[:] feels a bit too much like Perl. Unlike with the slicing notation, those who don’t know Python will understand that b contains a list."

He'a an historian. It's what they do.

I was automatically banned awhile ago, after doing something silly (checking all my bookmarks for dead links). The explanation was that the server thought I was DDOSing. It was OK after a week or so. Maybe it'll work out for you too.

You, and the other respondents, are probably right. Sometimes I'm too quick on the draw.

From the comments:

> here’s a strange little story that happened to me a while ago – I set up a gmail account to deal with nigerian letters and such (I wanted to collect some data to report the spammers/thieves, without compromising my actual e-mail address in the process). I set this up with a fake username (something like george.thompson or so) and a password which included the word “nigeria” in it. Lo and behold, after my first login (before sending/receiving any mail) the targeted advertising in gmail included some nigerian ads (nigerian holidays, nigerian business bureau, etc). coincidence?….

If true, it seems they matched ads to the guy's password. Which means they needed to be able to read it plain text. The plain text should only ever live long enough to create or match with a hash.

IANAL, and I realize this is probably laughable from an IP lawyer's point of view, but ...

Why can't OverbearingCompany send a letter stating something like we notice your logo or other IP is similar to ours. We recognize that we are in different businesses, and so we choose not to pursue this matter at this time, but we reserve the right to pursue any legal remedy at any time in the future that we determine your material to be infringing on ours.

That would demonstrate that OverbearingCompany is practicing all due care, yet doesn't waste OverbearingCompany's time and avoids potential destruction of SmallUnderdog.

As things are, the mere existence of large, overbearing companies causes accidental and sometimes catastrophic injury to the small and cuddlies of the world. Is that really what IP lawyers dreamed of doing when they were kids?

This is OK if you don't have vim installed, but the best way to learn vim is to use vim, and the best way to use vim to learn vim is:

vimtutor

which comes with vim and is basically a file that you edit, with progressive instructions on the basics of vim.

:help vimtutor

...

On Unix, if Vim has been properly installed, you can start it from the shell: > vimtutor

On MS-Windows you can find it in the Program/Vim menu. Or execute vimtutor.bat in the $VIMRUNTIME directory.

...

If you listen very carefully, you can almost hear "We realize that Google Reader is not for everyone ..."

Yep, key bindings plugins are a poor substitute for Vim itself. Vim is more than keys.

I long ago gave up on any kind of Vim/vi plugin to anything. My first inclination, when I have to use a tool that wants to own the text, is to open Vim and the other, and figure out a way to re-load when I move to the other.

I have typed more keystrokes into Vim than any other application in the last twenty years.

If I live to ninety and lose my mind, I will still be able to type in Vim.

I couldn't sign the petition (two petitions actually) with Firefox.

The maddening thing is that I was already logged in (the telltale at the bottom said so), but the Sign button was disabled.

Sent a complaint.

Did you notice there's a Facebook Like button?

So Facebook knows when you go to a government site.

I imagine Facebook also knows which petitions you sign, or at least which ones you click on. I say imagine, because although I'm signed in, it still asks me to sign in before I can sign the petition, and signing in while I'm signed in leads to a 404.

(bump) Would be great to hear an answer to this.

And they'll answer that petition by pointing out that they've made petitions available.

Of course they're ignored. Everything that comes across a politician's attention is an opportunity for him to reinforce his message.

The petitions are not there for us to influence them. They're there (they spent effort to put them there) for them to influence us.

They don't mind Operation Payback or Anonymous much at all, because their actions are inconsequential relative to the unimaginable amounts of money they're making.

You can't attack Big Content in any meaningful way, because the unimaginable (again) amounts of money they spend bribing Congress and the White House makes you absolutely insignificant as a voice.

And there's your solution:

Stop giving them money! Period.

We bitch and moan about all the bribery (I guess some people still call it lobbying, or access) that goes on, while at the same time we give them all of the exact same money that they're doing the bribing with.

If you want things to change, stop giving them money. Choke off their air supply.

You might think that your choice to not buy CDs and movies won't make a bit of difference. And you might be right. But there is no other way to stop them except by cutting off their supply of money.

Make them irrelevant in your life. Don't buy their music or their movies. Read books (I know), from the library if possible. Read more from the Internet (I know) and blogs, there's an amazing amount of free, quality content swimming around out there.

Make your own content, and be content with less content.

Yes, me too, I'm a programmer. That's how I think of myself, regardless of what infinitely varied tasks I may do. And me too, that's what I blurt out when people ask me what I do.

In more formal contexts, like resumes and job apps, I call myself a software developer, because that's a more encompassing description of what I do. Software development is not just programming, even if that's the most obvious and the most fun part.

My employers call me whatever they want to call me. That's been technical staff member, programmer, software engineer, etc.

I never voluntarily call myself a software engineer. I've never worked under the supervision of a PE who was legally responsible for my work, and I've never been on a track working toward my PE. Very few software developers work in that environment.

I don't mind the informalization of the term software engineer, but I don't use it because I've never, ever worked in an environment where programming or software development was practiced as an engineering discipline using national or international standards of practice or product. Software development where I've been, and where most people are, is much more an individual art than a community science. So I don't want to give the impression that what I'm doing is in any way a legal, formal engineering practice.

"Shuttleworth said that power users want to have things just work,"

And yet ...

If I had the time I'd probably try it out, it looks pretty slick.

Where it says play anywhere on your front page, I didn't know what that meant. Web on your server? Web on my server? Cross platform? I was reluctant to sign in and find out.

I don't know why it takes so long to grant a patent when all they do is slide it under the rubber stamp machine.

The author cites Williams. Is it plagiarism to discuss someone else's work? The blogosphere would look pretty empty.

"There are at least four key principles of visual design that have an important impact on usability. These four principles — contrast, repetition, alignment and proximity — were originally given the engaging acronym CRAP by Robin Williams (the visual designer, not the comedian). You can exploit these four principles to make user interfaces both more attractive and easier to use.

Let’s look at each one in turn."

Not for me.

I've already gone to Lubuntu, and I'm starting the thought process of moving to Mint or Debian.

My thirteen year old has asked to go to Mint, we'll probably do that next weekend. "Dad, you can't even change the panel." The "teachable moment" will end up being about re-partitioning his Linux partition (it's all root at the moment), not about learning Unity. He just wants to GSD.

There's an assumption that those anecdotes would trigger memory of your own experience, and that you'd come to a similar conclusion (or assumption) as the author.

I think.

freecode makes me think of freeware/shareware sites, i.e. there's a fair amount of dodgyness implied.

Who decides whether he gets the beating, and who administers it?

Sounds like a step backward in civilization to me.

Should we ignore this kind of problem? No. Should we go full vigilante on it? No.

Make sure you keep your taxes up to date.

Make sure the local government knows that your taxes are up to date.

Make sure you follow the rules in your neighborhood covenants.

Make sure you know when the neighborhood council have charged you for a remedy that they took upon themselves, make sure you pay that, and make sure you see the levy notice if you don't pay it.

Make sure ...

That would be recursive, since IE is the tool of choice for downloading Firefox.

Times out in a normal browser at the moment.

If you use a text browser like elinks it looks like any other normal page. Although in text mode it would have looked better if everything was lined up left with minimal spacing between lines.

Ah, it just loaded, but only one of the heads showed up. Cute.