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From: root@bu-cs.UUCP (Barry Shein)
Newsgroups: net.emacs
Subject: Re: Beginners Intro to EMACS?
Message-ID: <671@bu-cs.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 24-Sep-85 15:12:39 EDT
Article-I.D.: bu-cs.671
Posted: Tue Sep 24 15:12:39 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 28-Sep-85 06:46:51 EDT
References: <5400002@datacube.UUCP>, <3745@topaz.RUTGERS.EDU>
Organization: Boston Univ Comp. Sci.
Lines: 44

Just an anecdote I thought I would share: (this happened the other night)

A friend is (finally!) taking her first intro computer course, at Harvard
Extension. They gave her explicit instructions on some editing practice
in VI but said they can use any editor they like. She took me up on an
offer I made to use my terminal at home (no doubt cuz I would be in the
next room when a question arose, I'll send Harvard a bill :-)

'How do you move around?' -- try hjkl
'What does that mean?' -- try it, maybe try the arrow keys
'How do insert something -- use 'i' or 'a'
'Which do I use' -- 'i' for in front of a character 'a' for behind
'What does that mean?' -- try it

Harvard is running VI under VMS. First, she kept yelling out to me that
the cursor was doing crazy things, I tried to ignore it for a while.
I finally (to get some peace) walked over and to my horror discovered
that, indeed, not only was the cursor moving around randomly, it *wasnt*
a screen update problem, their VI really wanted to put the cursor there!
Fine, I showed her how to compensate (use '^') and went back.

'How do you delete a character?' (we're talking intro here!) Use 'x'

'VI went crazy again' I walked over, she was wrong, there was
a register dump, there was no VI (the VMS4.x upgrade seems to have
plunged VMS sites into the dark ages, read fa.info-vax for details.)
None of this is VI's fault per se, but I decided to switch her to Emacs
(which they fortunately had and it worked.)

'How do you go into insert mode?' -- just type
'How do I move around' -- use the arrow keys
'How do I delete something' -- use delete
silence...time passes...
'How do I save a file' -- it's weird...use ^C^C (this was CCA I guess)
'Thanks, I'm done -- why does anyone ever use VI?'

Well, in all fairness I *like* vi (actually, I like ed) mainly for it's
line orientation and fabulously designed (from ed) pattern matching,
it's just hard in emacs to do :.,/^}/s/foo[0123456789]/bar;/g, I like emacs
a lot also, I use about 10 different editors during a week, maybe I'm weird.

but the argument was lost on her...just an anecdote.

	-Barry Shein, Boston University


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