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Does it work? There's lots of evidence it's worked for a lot of people who've tried it (including me).

Does it always work, for everyone, in every project? That's an open question.

Pair programming is not the first XP practice a project should try. Could a project get a lot of value out of XP without doing pair programming? I think yes, and I'm an advocate of programming in pairs; the question is open to debate.

If Qualcomm were to offer a Linux port of Eudora, I'd be hard pressed to think of a reason not to switch to a Linux desktop. I've tried Evolution; it's too much like Outlook. Eudora isn't perfect (in particular, I need more sophisticated filtering abilities), but I've been using it for ten years, so only something spectacularly more powerful would make me switch. (I've only used two email programs in my life, the first was unix Berkeley mail, the second was Eudora.)

The only other application I use constantly is bbedit, but I suppose I could learn to love vim or emacs. Web browsing is already handled quite well by Mozilla and its derivatives.

I'm ready, even eager, to switch, as soon as the software is ready. Until then, MacOS X.

Uh.. you can still use VIM

I will not say that having broadband does not imply some wealth, but publishing webpages goes even when you have a 28.8kbps modem. I know, I did that back in the day. As for using Frontpage: how many people actually have bought Frontpage? Probably most people just use a pirated version, even "the whealty ones". You have no idea how many people actually think it is stupid to pay for software (I don't think that, but I know many people who think exactly that).

Not only are they stupid comparisons, but unices also have command line completion; long file names by desgin, not kludge; and color to help add some sense to to the plain ol' letters on the screen.

vi is a drag to learn, but once you've got it down, it becomes second nature, and has now become my perfered Windows text editor (see VIM).

Don't get me wrong... I think if people were forced to learn DOS they'd be a bit more cluefull about how Windows & their file system work (and I wouldn't have to keep adding "doskey /insert" to people's autoexec.bat's), but that certainly doesn't mean DOS is an easier to use OS than anything UNIX-like.

Kidding aside, I'm curious about text editors for win32. Sure, there are quite a few (CrimsonEditor is my current favorite, with Source Edit close behind) but, like any good geek, I'm looking for The Best ;).

Ports of Emacs or Vi[m] to win32 don't interest me very much, primarily because I enjoy the hotkey conventions that I'm used to already in win32 (Ctrl-C to copy, Ctrl-X to cut, and so on). Really, I'm looking for one with syntax highlighting for languages such as HTML and CSS, and a tabbed-interface. Are there any Super Great editors that I should check out?

Microsoft likes Vim though. :)

• Photoshop and Painter - and yes, I use the GIMP too, but they're not the same.
• FruityLoops - best damn drum machine I've ever seen.
• Games - particularly MMORPGs. Windows does game graphics better. Now, there are a lot of games I play on *inx (I'm a FreeBSD man myself), but Anarchy Online isn't one of them.

• That's all I've got to say. I don't like Microsoft as a company, but one or two of their products are pretty decent. Office isn't one of them, and I use VIM and CodeWarrior for development on Windows and Unix both.

Did you just imply there is a better text editor than vi?

Yes.

It's called "Vi IMproved".

Or, if you want to build an operating environment around an editor, you can always go for XEmacs.

Did you just imply there is a better text editor than vi?

Yes.

It's called "Vi IMproved".

Or, if you want to build an operating environment around an editor, you can always go for XEmacs.

ITYM, kill -9 -1

Windows users should try out gvim - definitely now my editor of choice under Windows...

I eagerly await the day when i can include GoBe Productive on this list, it is really 'suite' (if you will forgive the pun).

The Windows port of the Vim editor is a sine qua non. Except for not being able to use interesting pipe commands, the PC port will do anything in the world one might want to do with a text document, and it has just enough GUI functionality to be useful without being intrusive.

emacs has been around for years and years and is very robust and powerful.

vim (based on vi, which has been around for years and years) has been around for a really long time and is extremely powerful.

Both are far more powerful development environments than ANY IDE or any editor (sorry JEdit) and can interoperate with ANY SYSTEM YOU CAN THINK OF.

Learn them now!

(Oh yeah, use ant or make for building your system. Preferably make, but ant is easier when are you just starting and is more cross-platform)

Or if you are 133t you can just use vim

I hate to say it, but we may be seeing "Application Darwinism" at work here.

I've been on the lookout for a fast cheap text (only) editor to do HTML development with, on OS X. Many of the apps I've tried are just too clunky for me to consider paying anything for them. I eventually went back to VIM, even though it lacks some basic Mac functionality (i.e., it isn't a true document-based app). Since my LCD for a text editor is vi, this isn't so much of a hardship. I don't suggest everyone run out and use it on a daily basis. It work for me, but as they say: "Closed course. Professional driver".

I took a look at Pepper for a day or two, and I found it a very odd app. It seemed to operate contrary to some OS X usage expectations, and it rendered any typeface I chose terribly. The interface just felt all wrong to me. It crashed enough that I simply considered it "beta" and moved on.

I have similar complaints about the much beloved (but not by me) BBEdit.

I'm not saying that any of these editors are necessarily bad. If you like it, by all means, use it. However, I don't think all the comments about Pepper on Version Tracker are necessarily spurious. It seems that Pepper didn't quite cut it for other OS X users, as well.

Having less variety of apps available to OS X is sad, and some people will probably miss Pepper (even if they didn't pay for it), but I can't help but think that if it was a little more of a killer app, it would have survived.

Of course its a bad book, have you read any of the authors books?

Practical C++ Programming Is one of the worst O'Reilly and Associates has ever published. Here's part of a review from Amazon.com:

But not only does this book not deal with the features of the language that it should, but the material it *does* deal with is presented in an inexcusably poor way. It's clear that Oualline really doesn't know C++, or he would use inheritance correctly---hell, he would declare main() correctly!

Then there's the company: New Riders

Java 2 Certification Training Guide by Jamie Jaworski. Use this book and you're guarenteed to fail the test.

As for me I've been bitten once by the author, and I don't give second chances, there are plenty of good books out there, so I really don't need him. I use gvim nearly every day, and I have Learning the vi Editor, by Linda Lamb (5th Edition), in case I forget something. For the rest I have vim.org

As for me, I don't need another doorstop.

If you like VIM, think about making a donation to ICCF to help kids in Uganda.

More info in VIM (:help uganda) or at http://www.vim.org/iccf (not http://www.iccf.org).

Download VIM from here.

If we ever got legislation mandating open formats for all public documents, Microsoft would be a minor player in the software world within five years.

I doubt that MS would have a problem with this. Look at one of MS's major products, Visual Studio. Anybody could download a copy of DJGPP or Borland's compiler, and just write the code in vim. Instead many people purchase Visual Studio because they prefer the IDE and it's tools. The same with MS Word, you could just as easily write the document in WordPad (of which the source is available). But they don't, because they actually perfer the interface.

A lot of people attribute MS's success to their "closed" formats, but they do actually make some good tools. If there was a mandate for open formats, MS would probably just focus on building better tools to work with those formats.

but I thought you all might like to know that after that informative article on linux installation, I've decided to switch to linux, as soon as they port vim to it.

(G)VIM is still the best generic editor by far in my opinion. It can edit huge files (I've corrected codec tags in 700Mb AVIs), it's fast, and it integrates quite well in the windows environment. And it's (totally) free.

Well, that depends on the type of editing you do. If it's coding, then VIM is the best - if not, then it's a toss-up.

Its syntax hilighting, code-folding and command-based editing modes make it ideal... and once you press 'i' and have the backspace=2 option set, it's basically the same as textpad32/notepad/ultraedit.

PS: VIM is NOT vi! vi was written for a different era. I prefer Emacs over vi, but not over VIM.

Also, I do prefer the native IDEs when I code in Delphi, Visual C++, Python (here I use Boa-constructor instead of (g)VIM)

Uh?

I don't see the need of this.

However, I still need a place where I can find maintainers or core developers of existing Free Software packages that accept my feature request and payment, implement the feature within a reasonable timeframe and give me support if it doesn't work in my environment.

You can simply find the website or mailing list for the software you need support or new futures and contact them directly.

For instance, if you need one feature to get added to, say, Vim, you could go to their site, find out the addresses for their mailing list and then send them a message stating with your feature request and your interest in paying USD $500 to whoever implements it.

Thanks.

Alejo.

Excuse me, I think you mean the Win32 version of Vim :)

Otherwise, I agree, Cygwin is pretty neat. The only thing that ticks me off when using Cygwin is that when you run bash (or another shell) it's still in a Windows command prompt, and they don't really resize that well (at least not in 2k, dunno 'bout xp). And yeah, you can run X with xterms, but at that point you might as well run *nix...

Ummm, an IRC log is just a text file. You're probably viewing it in a Windows text editor, which would cause the line breaks not to translate properly. Try viewing the file in Wordpad, or better yet, VIM.

As an aside, just because everyone you know uses AIM doesn't necessary mean that the rest of the world does. The reason it's not posted in an AOL IM log format is because the Q&A took place on IRC, not on AOL.

"the best HTML editor is Notepad"

The best HTML editor, or text editor for that matter is Vim, but I digress. I don't want to start a vi vs. emacs flame war.

When my boss asked me to create some HTML templates for our web application. He got me to install Dreamweaver. In less than an hour, I gave up and used Vim to edit the HTML directly. Editing the HTML by hand is the only way I can do webpages. I need to have total control over my HTML in order to make even a half-decent web page.

I don't understand why people insist on using WYSIWYG editors. They infuriate me. They're especially bad for tables, where dragging and dropping the margins never seems to work. When I get to the raw HTML, my table margins, sizes, etc, do EXACTLY what I want them to do.

One is sort of chunky and ugly, and she won't let you see her naked, and you pretty much know already that you wouldn't really enjoy it if she did. The other has a slim, beautiful body, and when she takes off her clothes and parades it around, all the men ooh and ahh over it. That's the analogy I like to use. Maybe it isn't 100% correct, but that's the impression I get when you've got MS saying "No, no, you don't want to see our source code!" and meanwhile, you've got these open source softwares that are taking it all off, and saying "hey, baby, look at THESE!" Microsoft is NOT sexy. Linux, apache, and all of those wonderful open source projects ARE. But this is just how I see it. I mean, if I was to go on a date with a woman, and she proudly told me that she has an MCSA certification, I'd probably politely nod, but secretly be planning on my escape (maybe run away after telling her I had to use the restroom). On the other hand, if she told me that she had her own php based website, and that her text editor of choice was vim, then I'd be all weak-kneed and googly-eyed, and I'd want her to have my children. But again, that's just me. I don't know how it is for other people. I mean, I may not really UNDERSTAND beautiful women, but I sure like to look at them. So, I don't think there's any action required, as in "let's get rid of Microsoft." I think that it's really just a matter of educating the masses that there's an alternative, and it looks good naked. Or as you might say, it's a lot safer because the code can be (and is) made public without compromising national security.

I agree, often that's a really good way of saving a few moments flicking up/down trying to determine which 'terminator' belongs to which block, things like } //end of "while (foobar...)" enhance it more.

of course, using a half decent editor you can jump to/from the matching open/close braces by hitting the % key.

Almost as cool, Vim can already be used as an editor for those of us who are forced to use MS Visual Studio in our daily lives:

http://www.vim.org/doc/if_ole.txt

Defies the whole persona of vim. vim loses what makes it useful when you stick it in a window and add menus and buttons.

You'd better reread Vim's design goals. From the documentation:

Vim is not a shell or an Operating System. You will not be able to run a shell inside Vim or use it to control a debugger. This should work the other way around: Use Vim as a component from a shell or in an IDE. A satirical way to say this: "Unlike Emacs, Vim does not attempt to include everything but the kitchen sink, but some people say that you can clean one with it. ;-)"

Defies the whole persona of vim. vim loses what makes it useful when you stick it in a window and add menus and buttons.

You'd better reread Vim's design goals. From the documentation:

Vim is not a shell or an Operating System. You will not be able to run a shell inside Vim or use it to control a debugger. This should work the other way around: Use Vim as a component from a shell or in an IDE. A satirical way to say this: "Unlike Emacs, Vim does not attempt to include everything but the kitchen sink, but some people say that you can clean one with it. ;-)"

Well I just played with Eclipse and I must say, as an IDE goes, it is not very impressive. Seems to be build more for the Windows Developer than anyone else. And while that may be the "norm" of the script kiddies out there, I would rather see an editor more designed for the serious developer.

Must also say that SWT looks HORRIBLE. I would rather put up with a slight lag in the gui than put up with something that is going to ruin my vision!

Swing is only slow when the developer can't code. If you are using an IDE to build your gui for you it is going to be slow. Learn the language, write you gui by hand and learn how to make it perform. I write Swing GUIs on a daily basis that are quite fast. Would I say they perform as fast as native? Depends on the platform. Linux? yes, OSX? yes, Windows? hell no. Is that the language's fault? probably not.

What I am saying here is dont fault the API when you are running windows. My bet is on the problem being in the OS.

If you want to see a real gui, written in Swing, that runs quite nicely on every platform try out Netbeans I think you will be quite surprised and pleased. I know I was.

Of course if you want to do some serious coding then you need to learn VIM, there is a true editor. Definitely not for the script kiddies.

Will we ever see a better text editor come with the os?

Me, I use Notepad+, it's never steered me wrong. And when I'm feeling frisky, there's GVim.

There are three major points for my perfect email client:

1. Look and feel the same in X and console, so that I could make use of both xpdf/mozilla and remote mail reading.
2. Localization. Being non-native english speaker, this one is pretty important.
3. Keyboard navigation

For the last 4 years I am extremely satisfied with the combination:
- fetchmail (getting mail)
- procmail (sorting mail into mailboxes)
- mutt (reading/replying)
- vim (editing)

When it comes down to analyze mailbox and generate some reports, like for example, in the case with antivirus reports, I use perl with Mail::MboxParser module.

For all my friends, who need GUI to read email, I recommend using Mozilla and or Evolution

From the article: Engineers are developing a sensor, which detects signals coming from the muscle movements in the cheek and jaw made when people are speaking. Signals from the sensor are interpreted and the sound being made by the speaker can be determined, but because the system measures such impulses, the user needs to just mouth the words and no actual sound has to be made. "This technology is still at a basic level," says Mariko Wada, a spokesperson for NTT DoCoMo in Tokyo. During experiments, engineers have been able to get the system to discern vowel sounds with 100 percent accuracy -- a world first according to Wada. Now, is it just me, or are people jumping to conclusions. There is _no_ data concerning how accurate measurements is ... there is no way to "tune" the system ... teaching a speech recogniatino system is hard enough although we can _hear_ the sounds ... can you imagine trying to debug this system? How many people here can lip read anyway? How can you except to debug it then? For me, plain typing is the way to go. I'm just gonna work on vim and try the dvorak keyboard. Later,

I wouldn't be surprised if he _still_ uses vi, maybe even under Cygwin, on his own machines.

There are lots of reasons to like vim over vi, but for me the big one is GUI integration. Running vi under X-Windows is a nightmare, unless you're better than I am at remembering to go into insert mode before pasting. Vim, by contrast, talks directly to clipboard. And using vim under Windows and X-Windows is pretty much the same.

But given Mister Bill's fondness for gee-whiz technology (is it true that the famous mansion needs 50 NT servers to keep from falling down?) I suspect he does everything in MS office -- and spends a good chunk of each day hacking VBA macros!

Vi users - repent of your evil ways.

Linus Åkerlund's Towers of Hanoi implementation for vim. can be found here. He has also written a cool Mandelbrot set generator in vim that can be found on the same page.

Yeah, not like there are any other examples of open source software based on proprietry software.

tlhf

xxx

Also, your linked article talks about a compiler which compiles itself. IE, GCC recognising GCC. Having GCC regocnise BCC, VC++, et al would be insanly difficult. Even more so in this case as Mono is being released after the Microsoft compiler.

Since PHP doesn't really allow you to do anything interesting that a normal IDE would allow (like, say, DEBUGGING!), we just use Vim and migrate to Perl.

I have played a bit in the past with this issue, and come to the conclusion of mingw (Minimalist GNU for Windows) and the dos/windows version of VIM. With this approach you sidestep the issue of cygwin.dll being GPL rather than LGPL, and thus can release proprietry programs if you choose. The windows version of GVIM (Graphical VIM) has the ability to use the commons windows hotkeys and so on, as well as the normal vim shortcuts, so users comfortable with either should feel at home. Another advantage MinGW has is the size of generated executables, by default they are so much smaller than cygwin and MSVC executables.

There was MacPerl and MacVim, but no bash or mysql that I know of. OS 9 was a fonky thing.

I had dinner with Matthias Neeracher on Thursday night, by the way. How cool is that?

Even deleting swapfiles is not enough, you need to wipe the free space on the drive. When you truncate a file, the remainder gets left in now-free blocks. When you expand a file, depending on the filesystem, it could actually pick the whole file up and move it to a larger set of contiguous blocks to avoid fragmentation. I dont know what, if any, filesystems do this in practice, but it is one possibility to consider. Then theres the fragments journaling filesystems leave all over the place.

And, the most obnoxious behaviour: some editing processes actually unlink() and write() the file to a new location in its entirety when you save. Ive witnessed vim change the inode value upon a save, so I could guess it has physically moved the file, also. When RCS checks out a file, it actually unlink()s the current checked-in version and proceeds to re-write() the checked-out copy. Im sure there are more examples.

Although I shudder at the idea of administering Win2K through telnet, there are text editors:

G:\WINDOWS\system32>ver

Microsoft Windows XP [Version 5.1.2600]

G:\WINDOWS\system32>dir ed*.*
Volume in drive G has no label.
Volume Serial Number is 588C-29C1

Directory of G:\WINDOWS\system32

23/08/2001 12:00 69,886 edit.com
23/08/2001 12:00 10,790 edit.hlp
23/08/2001 12:00 12,642 edlin.exe
3 File(s) 93,318 bytes
0 Dir(s) 1,061,761,024 bytes free

Win2K on my system matches this too. Both Professional version, which means they'll be on server too. Admittedly edlin is rubbish, but the MS-DOS edit.com is OK; and you can always get vim from here, or even emacs.

Not that you'd actually want to, as Windows servers aren't aimed at UNIX people; they're aimed at people who want an easy-to-use graphical interface rather than going into the inner depths of the system. That's why Apache 2.0 needs an IIS-style interface if it is to get popular, rather than linuxconf/webmin (both of which have had holes as serious as IIS; linuxconf is one of the primary causes of the current glut of open relays.) Otherwise, Apache-2.0 on Windows will be just as much a minority view as 1.3 is today, which would be such a shame.

www.vim.org is cool and all, but check out vim.sf.net for a site with all kinds of Vim resources and docs.

Vi(m) is the crappiest applications ever written! even worse than windoze!(!(!(!(!(!)))))))

Its unstable, impossible to use and only geekazoids and nerdasaureses use it, and even they like emacs better!

SO FUCK VI(M), delete it, rip it in to a 1,000,000 pieces and join the anti vi(m) world (and that is like 99.9999% of the world) FUCK VI(M)

First, as others have mentioned, lighting can work wonders. The overhead lights (florescent) are about the worst thing you can use in an office environment with computers. On the other hand, too little light can be just as bad. I had a floor lamp (one of the ones that opens up toward the ceiling) that had a bulb go out, so I temporarily used a small (and very dim) desk lamp. It was about as bad as having too much light. The floor lamp is much better.

Also, here's a few other tips (some have been mentioned previously) that work for me:

• Keep background noise and distractions to an absolute minimum. This will do wonders in improving your train of thought.
• If you have the luxury of a DOOR for your office (or cubicle) then CLOSE IT. If you do not have a door, install one. :)
• Find some good classical music to listen to as you work. If you have an Internet connection at the office, check out my favorite. (If you don't, check out the local radio stations.)
• Most phone systems have a DND (Do Not Disturb) button on the individual phones. It's there for a reason -- use it. If you don't have a phone in your office, be thankful.
• On a similar note, if your phone system has direct dialing from outside (either via DNIS or an automated transfer) only give your extension number to close friends/family that you don't mind interrupting your coding. (Make everyone else go through the operator.) If you DND your phone, they will usually get your voice mail if they dial you direct, but still, if you phone doesn't have DND, this is your second line of defense.
• Don't keep your E-Mail client open while you work on other things. I have found that doing so creates a temptation to go read your new mail whenever it comes in.
• Minimize any other distractions that you may come across. Encourage people to send E-Mail or leave voice mail when they need something, instead of bothering you personally. Every time you stop and help someone, you have to spend time getting back into the swing of things. (I know this may sound a bit mean, but you do have a job you have to get done, right?)
• Depending on your network and/or what type of access you have to things, you may be able to install VNC on your machine and then work remotely from home if things get too nasty.
• Customize the color configuration of your software. I do as one other person has mentioned here - black backgrounds with white (or gray) text. Most of the time I even turn off the syntax highlighting of my favorite editor when coding.
• Anything else that might make you more comfortable and able to be more productive...

Also, a lot of what works and doesn't work will depend on the person and possibly the company you are in. Each person has their own needs and what environment works for me may not work for others. YMMV.

Oh, and if your phone system uses standard phones (in other words, no proprietary multiline garbage, your call hold/transfer/conference uses flash hook, and you can use standard Wal-Mart phones on it) then you most likely don't have a DND button. Nortel's Meridian system can have add-on cards to support standard phones, as can many others. Just buy a project box, mount a SPST switch in it, connect one leg of the switch to one leg of a 600 ohm resistor, the other leg of the switch to one side of the phone line, and the remaining leg of the resistor to the other side of the line. When you flip the switch, it puts a 600 ohm load across the line, which is like taking the phone off hook. Instant busy signal. :) (Just make sure it is a standard phone compatible system -- else things can get a bit hairy when you start plugging things in like that.)

I think it is great that there will be a cygwin-w32 architecture available through the Debian packaging system. However, what I would really like to see are native ports of GNU & other freeware packages. I've used Emacs, Vim, and MiKTeX on windows, as well as many file-utils and devel-utils have been ported, partially listed here or here (compiled primarily the MinGW or DJGPP compilers), but they are not centrally available or managed. I would also argue that the Debian branch for cygwin programs should be called w32-cygwin, and the native programs be under w32.

Just some more thoughts to fuel the fire.

That is entirely false. Many of these countries need infrastructure and other resources to make their marketplaces more efficient or facilitate better exchange of information or resources either internally or with the rest of the world.

In fact, while the average agricultural worker in an agricultural economy could care less about establishing a secure internet connection when they're having trouble feeding their families, by creating infrastructure you may be able to help thousands of farmers by allowing market intermediaries to better market or sell goods internally or abroad.

As much resources are wasted in many developing nations because markets and infrastructure are inadequate or easily abused due to informational inequities or corruption as anything else.

The point is that your skills are valuable. You may be able to use them to help more at the macro level than a strong back and sweat could help at the micro level. As you would do in the job market, leverage your skills in volunteering by using them in their most productive capacity.

Finally, you may be able to help from right here at home. Look at Bram Moolenaar's vim. More specifically, download it, then type ":help uganda". Vim is charityware. Rather than pay for this open-source product, the author asks you to donate to the Kibaale Children's Centre. I use vim all the time, and I've made a donation. In fact, I contributed more than I've paid for any other piece of software in years.

So if you're a good coder, consider something of that nature. Or get creative. I don't know how much Bram has raised for the KCC, but I'd guess his coding skills have made a big difference in alot of children's lives.

You've obviously got a big heart and a good head. If you use them both, I have no doubt you'll make a difference :-)

That is entirely false. Many of these countries need infrastructure and other resources to make their marketplaces more efficient or facilitate better exchange of information or resources either internally or with the rest of the world.

In fact, while the average agricultural worker in an agricultural economy could care less about establishing a secure internet connection when they're having trouble feeding their families, by creating infrastructure you may be able to help thousands of farmers by allowing market intermediaries to better market or sell goods internally or abroad.

As much resources are wasted in many developing nations because markets and infrastructure are inadequate or easily abused due to informational inequities or corruption as anything else.

The point is that your skills are valuable. You may be able to use them to help more at the macro level than a strong back and sweat could help at the micro level. As you would do in the job market, leverage your skills in volunteering by using them in their most productive capacity.

Finally, you may be able to help from right here at home. Look at Bram Moolenaar's vim. More specifically, download it, then type ":help uganda". Vim is charityware. Rather than pay for this open-source product, the author asks you to donate to the Kibaale Children's Centre. I use vim all the time, and I've made a donation. In fact, I contributed more than I've paid for any other piece of software in years.

So if you're a good coder, consider something of that nature. Or get creative. I don't know how much Bram has raised for the KCC, but I'd guess his coding skills have made a big difference in alot of children's lives.

You've obviously got a big heart and a good head. If you use them both, I have no doubt you'll make a difference :-)