this post was submitted on 21 Jun 2023
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In your opinion, which FOSS software is by many considered "old" or "obsolete", but are in fact, in your opinion, in many ways better than the newer alternatives? (feddit.dk)
submitted 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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I'll start:

  • RSS and blogs, news vs. social media
  • XMPP vs. WhatsApp/FB messenger/Snapchat
  • IRC vs. Matrix, Teams, Discord etc.
  • Forums vs. Social media, Reddit, Lemmy(?)
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[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 years ago (5 children)

Emacs. Still the best way to edit any kind of text in any context.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 2 years ago (2 children)

I came to say vim...Is the debate still a thing?

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 years ago (1 children)

No.

There is no debate because vim is the superior editor, period.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

Vim is the greatest tool ever made for manipulating text as text. Emacs is easier to modify (I <3 Lisp) and is better at handling the semantics of the text it's working with.

Also, Emacs has evil-mode now, so the only reason to still prefer Vim is 1. A strange love of vimscript, or 2. A lack of permissions to install Emacs.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I used to be on the vim side in the debates, but now that I've also used Emacs - Porque no los dos?

[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 years ago (2 children)

I've been using vim for years. Because I can't figure out how to exit it

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago

:wq! to save and quit or :q! to just quit

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago (2 children)

zz will also quit it. Zz when vim is sleepy

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago

Every time I see those videos I think to myself. "Man I'm still working on this shitty first brain and now I have to make a 2nd one?"

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

Or x, which does the same thing, with the same number of keystrokes. But the ZZ keys are closer together

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Absolutely! I can't believe when I stumbled across it in 2020 that it was as old as it is. And folks think it's too old and decrepit to use, it's inanely powerful.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago (1 children)

"inanely powerful" I'm dying

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago

Hmmm nah. I'm not editing. I'll stand by it.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I found it really funny when the "second brain / knowledge base" apps (like Obidian, Joplin, Logseq) started to explode semi-recently. "Organize your thoughts! Tag everything! Elegance through simplicity! Only use markdown!"

Yeah, I get it, orgmode is a really good idea. No need to re-invent it half a dozen more times to celebrate it's 20th birthday...

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago

And one of these days, someone will rediscover the magic of having a uniform editing environment for manipulating text in multiple different contexts.

[–] Arnaldur 1 points 2 years ago

I've been hoping that some good replacement comes along but they are all lacking significantly. Emacs is the best I've found but it's annoying in many ways that have been fixed by newer alternatives.

Large files, terrible defaults, and elisp come to mind.