ian jenkins

In the process of setting up a home development server. Basically want a debian box with all the necessary stuff loaded on to it, so any personal projects or freelance stuff I can do on a decent box, rather than develope with a wamp setup.

Anyways, during my setting up of the server, I managed to mess things up, so I couldn’t boot up into it. I knew exactly what the problem was and knew the exact file I needed to change. Luckily, I manged to use the installation disk to boot me into a command line (one which isn’t just readable!).

The command line was limited to only the basics, naturally. However, little did I know that the only editor I could use (or so it seemed) was vi. Now I have never used vi before and can safely say, they I do not plan on using it ever again.

it’s frickin crazy!

I know there are lots of vi fans out there and they would probably berate me (if anybody every manged to find and read this blog!), but it’s the most retarded editor I’ve ever come across. It took me the best part of an hour to remove just two words from a file, an hour!

I’m sure their are perfectly good reasons why it does things in such a crazy way, but it confused the shit outta me. Things I learned from using vi:

1. to delete a character it is not backspace or delete, oh no, its the letter x
2. to move the cursor from left to right and up and down its the keys h,j,k and l
3. You need to be in command mode to navigate around the file, and interactive mode to edit
4. i will do all i can to ensure I never have to use vi again!

Give me nano, pico, emacs, joe anyday.