Re: OT OmniWeb [was: Netscape 4.x?]

<posted & mailed>

I was going to post this privately, because it was so far OT, but you bring 
it back to Ruby at the bottom.

Thomas Hurst wrote:

>> Not (intentionally) flamebait:
> 
> Feh, try harder ;)

Well, for some reason I really did think you were using a Mac, and I really 
did see a dichotomy in a Mac user using vi/vim.  So I wasn't being mean, so 
I wasn't posting flamebait. :-)

> not a vi user, I'm a vim user. /bin/vi is reserved for a statically

Well, yeah, me too... but they are superficially interchangable.  I 
wouldn't use vim otherwise.  Actually, this is out of habit; I used to 
administer a bunch of Solaris machines, and an old Linux box, and the only 
two reliable editors were emacs and vi ... and emacs was too bloated (well, 
slow) for admin tasks.

I do make the mistake of calling "vim" "vi", and I do regularly use vim 
features vi is lacking.  While I'm listing my sins, I also completely 
ignore the GNU/ when I say Linux.  I've even been known to refer to my 
Mitsubishi 3000GT as a mere "car".

> gvim.  Same with /bin/sh.  Unfortunately most Linux dist's seem to have
> missed this concept and link half the stuff in /bin with /usr, not to
> mention fill /usr with as much crap as they can get their hands on :)

Hmmm.  Never noticed that, but I don't poke around in /bin much.

> Vi's not got that steep a learning curve.  The basics that get you
> though 90% of editing tasks are trivial, and the concepts of an editor
> with modes is only difficult for users with mental blindspots in those
> areas.

I disagree.  Once you know it, yes, but when compared to other editors, 
vi/vim has one of the worst learning curves.  The "modes" is very confusing 
for new users, and takes a while to get used to.  vim aleviated some that 
with the mixed mode entry that it supports, but it can still be a difficult 
concept to get used to.

Current user interface theory holds that mixed modes is a Bad Thing.  That 
said, I use vim for nearly everything, and believe EMACS' combination 
keycodes is even worse than mixed mode.

> I'm sure you can say the same about Emacs;  I've yet to look at a full
> emacs setup that didn't make my brain explode.

Agreed.  At one time, I used EMACS exclusively.  This was back in my 
Solaris days, before vim, so the more I think about it, the more I believe 
that vim is what converted me.  If you look at the learning curves of EMACS 
and vim, I'd say that vim starts out harder, but the curve is only linear. 
It is easier to jump right into EMACS and do really basic stuff (move 
around, write), but the learning curve is polynomial.

Both of them are much, much more difficult to learn than, say, Pico, but 
then, that's because there's much less to be able to learn with Pico.

> Speaking of editors, anyone played with Vim/Ruby?  Sounds like it might
> be a nice alternative to the built in scripting system, but I've not
> seen it or the other embedded external language support stuff being used
> much.

Well, I use the syntax mode all the time :-)  I haven't used Ruby to script 
vim at all; my brain doesn't think up editor scripting solutions to my 
problems.  I really like Project.vim for Ruby development, BTW.  All of my 
Ruby apps are either command-line scripts, or large applications -- neither 
of which lend themselves to executing from within VIM.  I haven't played 
with running unit tests from within vim... now *there's* an idea for 
scripting vim -- something that takes runit output and does error parsing, 
like it does for compiler errors for Java and C.

> Catholic?  Nah, semi-agnostic atheist who loves nVidia on an Athlon

Aren't "agnostic" and "athiest" mutually exclusive terms?  And, BTW, lest 
anyone think I was describing myself above -- I wasn't.

> based system using a BSD, cos Linux is developed by a bunch of GNU

I always thought it was funny that BSD also means "Blue Screen of Death". 
;-)

> Not that I can see.  Geek code looks rather old and smelly, actually,
> someone needs to come up with version 4 or something :)

Hmmm, yeah, last time I looked at it, it was a bit stale.  Neat idea, 
though.

> It depends if you tend to have geeky friends who think keeping a generic
> kernel around is lame and compile their entire OS with optimizations
> specifically for their CPU :)

Well, I do for my machine, but I use stock kernels for my wife's.  I do 
keep Ruby up to date on her machine, though :-)  I've got two or three 
scripts running on her laptop.

>>  |.. "The Best way to accelerate a Macintosh is at 9.8m/sec/sec"
>> <|> -- anon /|\ /|
> 
> Is that random? :)

Actually, yes, it is random.  'Sigit' generates them.

I don't like using Macintoshes myself, but I don't really have anything 
against MacOS per se.  I can't imagine running Ruby on a Mac.  It seems 
like it would be rather difficult, lacking a command line and all.

-- 
 |..  I/O, I/O, it's off to disk I go, a bit or byte to read or write,
<|>    I/O, I/O.
/|\   
/|    
 |