[JulianWasTaken]

> This may come as a surprise, but modern programming editors don't require the operator to switch between three mutually exclusive modes -- insert, delete and navigate. That's because modern keyboards have keys dedicated to those purposes, which means the operator doesn't have to either wonder which mode he is in, or switch modes, which saves an enormous amount of time when programming.

You speak as if modal editing came first and universally agreed upon better things evolved afterwards. I know this isn't true. I know you know this isn't true. You're being highly disingenuous.

Your link is equally disingenuous since you either don't understand that the operation involved there is not one you can do in-stride or with as few keys in any other "modern" editor, or if I give you slightly more credit but presume malice then you're being willfully misleading again.

[lutusp]

> You speak as if modal editing came first and universally agreed upon better things evolved afterwards.

That's exactly what happened, and think before objecting, because I was there. I used vi while working for NASA during the 1970s, when mode changes made sense (it saved paper on paper terminals). Since then, it has stopped making sense.

> I know this isn't true. I know you know this isn't true. You're being highly disingenuous.

When I wrote Apple Writer in the late 1970s, I suspected it would become popular because it eliminated the modes that plagued most contemporary editors including vi. I was right -- it did. Apple Writer became a best-seller because people hadn't yet realized that modes and mode switching were pointless burdens in a era of glass terminals and extended keyboards.

I can't believe there are people who haven't learned this elementary lesson now, over 30 years later.

[nessus42]

> I can't believe there are people who haven't learned this elementary lesson now, over 30 years later

Why would you let something like this bother you? There are many popular text editors and IDEs in the world, and of all these myriad, there is only one popular editor that is modeful: vi. Why would you begrudge the people who prefer to do their editing modefully, a single editor that does things this way?

It's not like vi is going to corrupt the yout's of today, as the yout's are fully exposed to IDEs such as Eclipse, IDEA, Xcode, and Visual Studio, all of which are modeless, not to mention Word, Pages, Google Docs, etc.

[marssaxman]

Modal editing did come first, and universally agreed upon better things did evolve afterwards. I remember "modes are bad" being established UI-design wisdom as long ago as the mid-'80s, after the Macintosh came out and everyone started moving toward graphical interfaces. I'm surprised there is anything about this question which is seen as being open to debate here in 2013.

[JulianWasTaken]

No. It didn't. The first editors were not modal.

And no, universally agreed upon better things did not evolve afterwards. I have no idea what the numbers are, but Vim is immensely popular amongst developers and I would highly suspect more popular amongst experienced developers than any editor whose name isn't emacs.

You are deluding yourself if you think that the modern world uses modal editors because their ancestors had keyboards that were too cramped.

[Shorel]

> the operation involved there is not one you can do in-stride or with as few keys in any other "modern" editor

SublimeText2: Ctrl-Delete: deletes the rest of the current word.

[JulianWasTaken]

That's not the operation from the question in the link (not that I'd be terribly surprised if Sublime Text had a way to do it anyways, but it's not as fluid as vim).

[Shorel]

My bad.

To fix my blunder:

Delete rest of the current word (and go to insert mode when applicable)

Vim: ce -> ST2: Ctrl+Delete

Delete current word (and go to insert mode when applicable)

Vim: caw -> ST2: Ctrl+D, Delete