vi vs emacs in a student environment

[Tracey Baker]

In <Jul.5.19.00.16.1988.26508 at topaz.rutgers.edu>, ron at topaz.rutgers.edu (Ron Natalie) wrote:
>[...] Demonstrating a proficiency in vi shows little
>to me as the the candidate's qualifications and lends me to believe that
>the applicant is a candy-assed 3B2 luser.

  Just one more thing to think about - for anyone who's going to get into
system administration, knowledge of vi, ex, or ed is a *must*.  When you've
got a system that's sick and will barely boot single-user, guess what you
use to muck around & fix things - yup, ed (unless, of course, you keep
emacs in /bin).  I worked with an SA once who had to call me to fix a config
file when he couldn't get a system to boot becuase the only editor he knew
was emacs.

  So even if the students are going to use emacs as their primary editor,
they should at least be exposed to one of the "primitive" UNIX editors.
Besides what I mentioned above, it's a good way to learn about regular
expressions, which are necessary for other areas of UNIX use as well (grep,
sed, etc.) - and learning them through use of an interactive editor is
probably easier than learning by writing sed scripts.

  Personally, I do just fine with vi.  I'd been using ed, ex, or vi for 6
years before I was ever exposed to emacs, and it was just too much trouble
to switch (especially when I don't really need to).

-- 
Tracey Baker  {att, rutgers!moss}!mhuxu!tab or tab at mhuxu.att.com  (201)582-5357
Rm. 2F-211,  AT&T Bell Laboratories, 600 Mountain Ave., Murray Hill NJ 07974
Any resemblance to actual opinions,       |"There ain't no cure when the rabid
living or dead, is entirely coincidental. | rock dog bites..." - Split Sydney