Post #4477121

2026-08-09 15:47 UTC

Nano is to EMacs/Vim as Notepad is to Notepad++ or VSCode (Nano has features Notepad doesn’t, but you get the point). I don’t do a ton of code editing directly on the CLI. I do things like change parameters in config files or open a file to read it quickly. If I’m doing more heavy editing, I’ll use a GUI editor (with an SFTP extension if I’m working on a headless server). So programs like Vim and EMacs have never been useful for me. To each their own (and I have all the respect for anyone who knows how to exit Vim without looking it up) but I’m guessing the majority of people have a similar experience.

Replies (1)

@Redjard@reddthat.com 2026-08-09 18:57

Being good at nano does not transfer like notepad transfers to notepad++ or kwrite. vim does not respect nano shortcuts and modes are simply a barrier: an extra keypress and another thing to keep track of. It slows you down significantly. Noone good at nano would switch to vim naturally, you have to force yourself to endure until you catch back up to what you could long do in nano. Conversely I don’t know a single shortcut, behavior, or info notepad shows that np++ or kwrite don’t have. Besides maybe bracket and quote completion in kwrite which you’d have to disable in settings. And on the other hand the advantages are more directly visible, like tabs, syntax hilighting, … You might not immediately intuit the shortcuts for tab management, but you can still use tabs and then not return to notepad due to missing them.

Open ##4477120