Mailinglist Archive: opensuse (3767 mails)

[Randall R Schulz <rschulz@xxxxxxxxx>]

Carl,

On Monday 06 February 2006 09:30, Carl Hartung wrote:
> On Monday 06 February 2006 12:19, Patrick Shanahan wrote:
> > Joe can use the old cp/m familiar wordstar command set.  It's like
> > rediscovering an old friend. <grin>.
>
> Wow! I wonder if those neurons still exist in my brain? I'm going to
> fire it up and try it today. Thanks, Patrick! - Carl

A brief anecdote:

I was a dyed-in-the-wool Vi programmer working exclusively on Unix 
systems for many years when the Mac burst on the personal computer 
scene. As so many did, I became enamored of it and diverted my career 
for about 10 years to do Mac programming. During this time, I had no 
access to Vi and used only MPW, BBEdit and Mac-specific text editors 
and word processors. When in 1997 I got a job back in the Unix (and 
Windows) world, I went back to Vi (or Vim as the case now often was). I 
had some trepidation about this, fearing I'd forgotten all my Vi 
skills. But much to my surprise, they had not dulled at all! I could 
just sit down and blast away as skillfully as I had for many years back 
when Vi was the only editor I knew.

Basal ganglia are a wonderful thing!

But with the experience fresh in my mind of using MPW (a programmable 
programmers' editor and IDE of sorts), I thought I should try to learn 
Emacs, it being a highly customizable and programmable editor (and an 
IDE of sorts). Well, I just couldn't do it. When I tried to use a 
text-mode, non mouse-and-menus editor, all my Vi knowledge barred the 
door--I just could not make the switch to the Emacs commands. Not, at 
least, without taking a lot of time to do nothing but learn a new 
editor. So I gave up on that.

Basal ganglia are a cursed thing!


Oddly enough, I don't have any problems taking up new mouse-and-menus 
editors.

So my guess is that you'll probably be able to resurrect your Wordstar 
editing skills quite quickly.


Randall Schulz