Learning from this HN thread that apparently Nano gets hate. I've been programming for years, nano is still my go-to for "I'm in the terminal and I need to make a small modification". I use it daily.
If you asked me, given no prior knowledge of any editor, whether I'd want to be dropped in nano or vim to make some random modifications somewhere it would be nano hands down. It's significantly easier to use and significantly more discoverable with the menu.
On the other hand vim is borderline a programming language for text.
It's kind of a slog at first. It's climbing a cliff to learn the basics, and that that point it's barely more productive than any other editor. Or maybe still less productive because a lot of simple operations are things you end up still having to go to Google for and spend some time reading through documentation.
But there's some point where you kind of get up that cliff and over the top of the mountain and it all sort of comes together on the downslope. Things start to become a bit more intuitive and become _easy_. You start to see the ways that a bunch of the little atomic bits you've learned can be chained together to create complex operations.
At that's the point where vim really shines. Once you hit that point it's kinda tough going back to anything else because it feels like working with one hand tied behind your back.
And that's all available... everywhere. Gui, terminal, local, remote, there's really no setup required beyond a `apt-get install vim` or `pkg install vim-console`.
But yeah, no hate on nano any more than I'd hate screwdrivers because drills exist. They're totally different tools.
Same here. I think it's better for small modifications. I find CTRL+o CTRL+x faster than ESC + :x, also there is no need to enter an edit mode. But at the end of the day is a matter of taste.
