by jandeboevrie on 6/18/25, 5:25 AM with 301 comments
by felineflock on 6/21/25, 11:59 AM
For example, TUI (text user interface) and CLI (command-line interface) are quite different. "CLI Text Editor" sounds more like someone editing a file using ECHO commands.
This new editor is actually a reimplementation of the classic MS-DOS 5 EDIT program from 1991. At that time, VIM was still very new, so "VIM memes" weren't yet part of the tech landscape.
Before VIM, there was vi. In Usenet posts - about 15 years before Google - people used to add a pithy humorous sentence at the bottom called "tagline" - here is one: "How do you exit vi? Reboot the system."
And Notepad was not the only option for Windows devs. We've had EDIT, DR-DOS EDITOR, Brief, WordPad, EditPad, Notepad++, and more.
by simonw on 6/21/25, 6:57 PM
docker run --platform linux/arm64 \
-it --rm \
-v $(pwd):/workspace \
ghcr.io/simonw/alpine-edit
More notes here: https://simonwillison.net/2025/Jun/21/edit-is-now-open-sourc... - and a new TIL on publishing to the GitHub Container Registry here: https://til.simonwillison.net/github/container-registry
You can also compile directly from source on macOS - instructions here, I've not tried this yet: https://github.com/microsoft/edit/blob/main/README.md#build-...
by hiAndrewQuinn on 6/21/25, 10:31 AM
In particular the fact that Ctrl + anything letter-oriented makes something that is word-oriented instead, for example Ctrl + Left Arrow and Ctrl + Right Arrow let you skip word-by-word in documents, and Ctrl + Backspace lets you delete entire words at a time. This feels like it should be way more common knowledge than it is, like how copying and pasting any multiline document into your browser's URL bar will almost certainly format it into a sane single-line format.
by seabrookmx on 6/18/25, 5:56 AM
If you want a TUI text editor with CTRL-C/V and mouse support, I'd recommend looking at micro: https://github.com/zyedidia/micro
by orsenthil on 6/21/25, 4:51 PM
by czarit on 6/21/25, 3:59 PM
by jll29 on 6/21/25, 12:59 PM
Make sure to add
alias edit=msedit
by aa-jv on 6/18/25, 9:27 AM
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PC-Write
I must have written a million lines of code with PC-Write in the 80's .. seems kind of odd to me that it has just disappeared into oblivion, given that its an extremely powerful editor.
Huh, the source is out there somewhere .. might be a fun Lazarus/Free Pascal project one of these days ..
by posix86 on 6/21/25, 11:59 AM
by jmmv on 6/21/25, 2:44 PM
by neoden on 6/21/25, 11:31 AM
by declan_roberts on 6/21/25, 2:19 PM
by VagabundoP on 6/22/25, 7:22 AM
Thing of all the (wo)man-hours in computing lost due to the slight difference in people finding the modifier key+key (including the slight increase in error rates) and the just having a dedicated Cut/Copy/Paste keys.
by culebron21 on 6/21/25, 7:05 PM
Today, it has successors: Midnight Commander (TUI on Linux), FAR Manager (TUI for Windows), Windows Commander (graphical UI, Windows).
Although MC is good tool, I notice something rubs me the wrong way in it, and I rarely use it -- probably, it's the conflict of focuses between a panel and the shell. E.g. you typed something, then tried to move to another folder, hit enter -> MC decides you run the command, hides the panels, lets the system yell at you "no such executable".
by __MatrixMan__ on 6/22/25, 1:56 AM
We're on a slippery slope towards DFW's subsidized time. Year of the depend adult undergarment, here we come.
by k3vinw on 6/21/25, 6:05 PM
by tedunangst on 6/18/25, 5:53 AM
by waynecochran on 6/21/25, 10:16 PM
by nop17 on 6/22/25, 8:41 AM
by AbuAssar on 6/22/25, 11:14 AM
by ChicagoDave on 6/21/25, 11:48 PM
by russellbeattie on 6/21/25, 10:12 PM
by T3OU-736 on 6/21/25, 11:23 PM
by quantadev on 6/21/25, 5:21 PM
I mean in VIM you can't even easily exit. I've always had to literally reboot my computer to get out of VIM. One time even that didn't work, so I had to pull the main circuit breaker in my house to get it to quit.
by JdeBP on 6/18/25, 3:20 PM
Microsoft hasn't designed a new text editor to "avoid VIM memes". It has re-implemented its old EDIT editor, which was a DOS program with a PIF on Windows NT, and which came out with MS-DOS 5 in 1991. There weren't silly "VIM memes" in 1991. Indeed, Stevie had barely turned into VIM in 1991.
The original announcement was discussed on Hacker News about a month ago.
* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44031529
And the idea that "Windows devs are forced to fire up Notepad" is just risible. Even by 1991 there was a wide array of text editors available in the Microsoft world. EDIT was over half a decade late to the party. DR-DOS had had EDITOR for a while. And if memory serves E and T2 were already in IBM's PC-DOS and OS/2.
* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44041533
It was pointed out back in 1991 that it was late to the party. Quite how someone from the world of Ubuntu can think that there are no text editors in the Windows world in 2025 apart from Notepad and so developers are "forced", its word, to use it, boggles the mind.
* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44037559
Anyone who actually does Windows development, and has probably discussed with other developers the merits of the various editors available, from MobaEdit through EditPad, WordPad, Brief, CodeWriter, and many others to Notepad++, would question the apparently zero knowledge that has informed this piece.