[whynotmaybe]

Fond memory of when I wrote an editor in the 90's because we didn't want to use "ms edit" for COBOL and asm files.

Syntax coloring, fast buffering and even a screen saver.

You could even call the compiler directly from it.

All this running on a pentium 120 and it felt a thousands times faster than today's vscode.

But vscode can edit multiple files at the same time...

[fragmede]

Firing up VSCode on an old laptop, and having it get totally bogged down running a text editor killed a part of my soul. I'm from the vim era of computing, but I have a hard time telling people that's the route to go today with today's tools.

[b00ty4breakfast]

Classic electron app. vscode is no doubt a powerful tool but it and other apps in the modern milieu are the software equivalent of those big lifted trucks that like to "roll coal" and get like 5mpg highway.

[mghackerlady]

Whoever decided to write a text editor in JavaScript and HTML/CSS for any reason other than absolute necessity deserves to be taken out back and shot

[nickjj]

Yes, I remember writing a VB6 driven editor. I was so happy when I got find and replace to work.

I still have the marketing page copy from 2002:

    <UL>
      <LI>Unlimited fully customizable template files</LI>
      <LI>Fully customizable syntax highlighting</LI>
      <LI>Very customizable user interface</LI>
      <LI>Color coded printing (optional)</LI>
      <LI>Column selection abilities</LI>
      <LI>Find / Replace by regular expressions</LI>
      <LI>Block indent / outdent</LI>
      <LI>Convert normal text to Ascii, Hex, and Binary</LI>
      <LI>Repeat a string n amount of times</LI>
      <LI>Windows Explorer-like file view (docked window)</LI>
      <LI>Unlimited file history</LI>
      <LI>Favorite groups and files</LI>
      <LI>Unlimited private clipboard for each open document</LI>
      <LI>Associate file types to be opened with this editor</LI>
      <LI>Split the view of a document up to 4 ways</LI>
      <LI>Code Complete (ie. IntelliSense)</LI>
      <LI>Windows XP theme support</LI>
    </UL>

Back then we used uppercase HTML tags.

[whynotmaybe]

Windows XP theme support! That was advanced!

[nickjj]

Haha thanks.

I went all-in developing that editor. It had a website and forums but it wasn't something I sold, you could download it for free. Funny how even back then I tolerated almost no BS for the tools I use. I couldn't find an editor that I liked so I spent a few weeks making one.

Fast forward 20 years and while I'm not using my own code editor the spirit of building and sharing tools hasn't slowed down. If anything I build more nowadays because as I get older the more I want to use nice things. My tolerance has gotten even stricter. It's how I ended up tuning my development environment over the years in https://github.com/nickjj/dotfiles.

[freedomben]

This is definitely aging me, but I'm still disappointed that all caps didn't win. That style made it so much easier to visually parse tags when scanning through the HTML code. I admit that syntax highlighting has mostly done away with that benefit, and now that I'm used to the lower case I don't mind it anymore, but the uppercase always felt better to me. Even reading that example above it feels more natural. Style is a hard thing.

[nickjj]

I agree, even with syntax highlighting it visually looks more appealing in caps.

[nurettin]

> But vscode can edit multiple files at the same time

borland turbo pascal and turbo c could also open multiple files at the same time.

[whynotmaybe]

Yes, my point was that my homemade editor didn't...

[mghackerlady]

If you're creative with it ed can as well