Andy Chase

I've managed to use *nix-based operating systems for three and a half years without taking a written stand in the never-ending Vi versus Emacs flamewar, but having just been forced to use Vi to edit a crontab, I would like to go on record as saying that in the 21+ years that I have been using computers, I have never had such an instantaneous, overwhelmingly negative reaction to any other piece of software. I simply can't stand it, and it angers me when I'm forced to use it.

It was true the first time I tried Vi when getting into Linux in late 2000, and it's still true almost four years later. Using Vi makes me want to hit something. Why can't I just move the cursor, enter some text, or delete a few characters just like I can with pretty much every other editor written in recent memory?

Well, I know there are well-established historical reasons for Vi's infuriating separation of command mode and insert mode, but that doesn't make them any more tolerable for me. I'll also be the first person to admit that Emacs' key-bindings are arguably just as obtuse as Vi's editing model, but at least in Emacs you can open up a document, move the cursor and insert/delete text pretty much as you'd expect.

I don't buy the classic rebuttal that "People who hate Vi just can't be bothered to spend a few hours learning it," either. I don't care if Vi has a small memory footprint, or how fast it is, or how powerful it is once you stop being a wuss and pretend to enjoy incessantly jumping between command and insert modes. I think this quote from 6 years ago sums up my feelings best:

I thought it was the stupidest, most perverse and irritating thing imaginable. I couldn't believe that people sat down to write a text editor and came up with this.