[pavlov]

Isn't that one of the formative Unix moments for every newbie: some program throws you into vi and you have no idea how to get out.

It's like getting your head stuffed into a toilet bowl at a boys' boarding school. Afterwards, you feel like part of the gang.

[maaaats]

When I was new with SSH and everything, I managed to enter vim on my session on a server I was managing. Didn't manage to exit. So quit the SSH session and logged back in, still in vim, what to do? Well, I logged in as another user and rebooted the server. Not my proudest moment.

[StavrosK]

Well, it does tell you how to exit if you press ctrl+c...

[hk__2]

Emacs is the same: when you don’t know it you can’t guess you have to type ^X^C to exit it.

[wz1000]

Most people use the X client for Emacs, so you can just close the window in most cases.

[archagon]

Back at my first job, since it was a fairly infrequent occurrence, I would occasionally ask my boss how to get out of vim. He would laugh and enter some new convoluted command every time!

[tormeh]

Oh, boy, I laughed.