It’s because my job involves managing and operating systems that are only accessible through ssh or tty sessions. I spend hours every day in a terminal, on a remote session, frequently editing files for stuff: crontabs, configs, etc.

I learned vi because when I was coming up, university systems only had ed, vi and emacs, with pico on the servers that had pine for email. I learned vi because it was more powerful than pico (and because I couldn’t get the hang of emacs key combos). I read the help files and learned how to use it, because it was foundational.

Every Unix-like system has a variant of vi. Many of my container images don’t, but it’s trivial to install and use anywhere if needed.

It’s just a more powerful tool than nano, and consequently more difficult to use. Which is fine, man. It’s okay for you to use a basic text editor on the rare occasion you have to edit something in a terminal. You don’t have cause to learn how to be productive in an advanced editor, and that’s fine.

For what it’s worth, when I’m writing and testing python, I use VS Code.

See, you’ve realized your blunder, now. Tell us what editor you use in the terminal, ReCursing, the one that is better than vim. We’d love to know.

What’s the superior choice to vim, then?

Stockholm Syndrome was never real, it was made up to explain a situation where hostages recognized an injustice and refused to perpetuate it, so cops called them crazy. So sure, if you call me crazy for my affection for a tool that has served me well for decades, I’ll consider you a cop.

This sounds about right. My only quibble is about sick computers and web apps. Twenty years ago I felt good because all I needed was a text editor and a web browser. Nowadays, the hungriest apps on my desktop are Firefox and VS Code.

I use VS Code on the desktop nowadays, but vi will always be my editor of choice in a terminal. Many of the reasons it was powerful and ubiquitous 30 years ago are still valid, so it’s still powerful and ubiquitous. And I’ve been using it for thirty years, so why would I switch to a training-wheels editor?

You wouldn’t download a car

These kids today, always writing things down and reading them. Scrolls! In my day we remembered things! Remember that? Course not, we didn’t write it down and your memories are all mush because kids these days are always writing things down and reading them!

Substack bans pornography but allows Nazis.

This is clearly a derivative of the work done by Doctor Emmett Brown in the mid 1950s.

Wow, coming outta nowhere to sideswipe Mississippi for no apparent reason, great work you’re doing here.

Agreed, bsky is currently developing and testing its federation capabilities with multiple servers in-house, which is an elaborate way of scaling but doesn’t actually have the critical necessary component for a federation, ie another entity on the other side. Bsky is the sole operator, administrator, moderator, and arbiter.

High-speed rail connecting every North American city.

Cool

Admittedly I’m an amateur, but I consider “automation” to encompass algorithms, heuristics, cron jobs, shell scripts, lambdas, basically anything created to do some steps that we’ve already figured out. As I understand it, machine learning uses statistical algorithms. The article makes the process sound like heuristics, though:

“K-ECAN uses basic information already readily available in the EHR, like patient demographics, weight, previous diagnoses and routine laboratory results, to determine an individual’s risk of developing esophageal adenocarcinoma and gastric cardia adenocarcinoma,” said Rubenstein.

I wouldn’t consider any of that kind of automation to be “intelligence.” Most of the stuff we currently call “AI” is the best form of automation that we can create right now, but it’s still not AGI.

This is not “intelligence.” This is automation.

The original post in this thread said:

Using a MacOS, even with all its flaws it’s such a clean experience compared to [Windows].

I agree with that. If you don’t, that’s okay.

The Mac can run MacOS. That was the point of this thread, that MacOS is less junked up than Windows.

“Oh, ay, you got yourself a nice, beauty-ful brand over here. You got your followers, you got your eggs. Very nice. It would just be a cryin’ shame if somebody was to

impersonate it.”

Bash isn’t the only shell. Most systems can use zsh or fish or tcsh or whatever shell you prefer, if you like that better than bash. You’re gonna have to run a shell if you want to use the terminal, though, you understand that?

Shell scripts are very good for specific tasks. Don’t use them for tasks that are unsuitable. Use python or go or node or c if those are better for your needs. Use the right tool for the job. But also, learn to understand why the industry has been using shell scripts for decades.