I think it might have been Richie who said about vi that it was designed for an age and technology that simply don't exist anymore.
It's a sentiment that can be applied to ed as well. ed is designed for a time when bandwidth was minuscule and every one wrote their programs out on paper for the first dozen iterations. Of course you didn't need to see the state of the file, you had it on paper in front of you. All you needed was the state of whatever line number the compiler was choking on.
Today everyone (for most values of everyone) composes in the editor so we need an editor that is good at composing as well as editing.
It's a sentiment that can be applied to ed as well. ed is designed for a time when bandwidth was minuscule and every one wrote their programs out on paper for the first dozen iterations. Of course you didn't need to see the state of the file, you had it on paper in front of you. All you needed was the state of whatever line number the compiler was choking on.
Today everyone (for most values of everyone) composes in the editor so we need an editor that is good at composing as well as editing.
and composing strongly benefits from context.