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- Hacker News
- > GUI editors are the opposite problem — they are powerful, but reaching for the mouse to edit a config file or fix a typo breaks your flow.
You don't need to reach for the mouse, are you not aware you can launch, switch apps, and type just with your keyboard?
But also, how is your demo using a mouse of your whole selling point is anti-mouse?
by eviks - - one of these days...
- it would be absolutely amazing if one of the guys writing posts along the lines "here is our super duper text editor"...
- would actually explain in a series of blog posts how they built a text editor from scratch and I am not talking about code...
- I am talking about architecture, methodology, how each feature is implemented on paper before coding it, thought process behind one..
- I am amazed that we live in a world where people create all types of software and yet little to no blog posts ever discuss the thought process and methodology behind them...
- like why did you do this...
- why is this feature implemented in this way and what are the alternative implementations and why did you pick this implementation over the others
by vivzkestrel - FYI: Claude has committed to the repo.by SrslyJosh
- This is gonna be a hard name to google :)by messh
- > curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ErikHellman/txt/main/insta... | sh
With the amount of new seemingly well polished personal projects being built (thanks to the help of LLMs) I feel increasingly concerned by how easy it is becoming to get a worm/virus/troyan to a lot of people.
by marjancek - And how is this different from downloading a file from a GitHub releases page? Or even installing from FlatHub with full fs perms (which would make sense for a text editor)?by magackame
- Yes and how we here on HN have a front row seat for these brand new repos (no shade on OPs project) Hold on to your crypto/fiat credentials ladies and gents! I bet the anti virus labs are having a hoot in this LLM enhanced craze.by sellmesoap
- I'm not going to criticise you for using Claude to build this. Honestly, for me as a consumer, it is a neutral thing provided the software is high quality
What I would ask is this: why should I use your software when I could generate my own?
For a relatively low cost in tokens, I could use Cursor & Fable 5.1 to generate a decent text editor of my own, if I constrained it to use high quality dependencies
So this is kind of the real quandary of OSS development: is there really any point creating tools for developers any more?
by zero_shift - I think yes because there are people who prefer picking up something rather than building their tool. Recreating just everything from scratch or make custom solutions are not the one way to go. I do not want to create editor/IDE because it is not in my interests. I choose VS Code, Kate, Notepad++, Nano instead. If I have paid LLMs I will use them different way than reinventing editor lol.
Also keep in mind that it is software which requires a little bit maintenance from time to time. And access to LLM (mostly paid) and (or - depends on if we want to understand something) domain knowledge (in this case how to build editor, how to do parsing etc.).
However if somebody wants to do custom things then let him/her do it. And yeah first editor, then programming language, then... OS and so on.
by testerius - I live in emacs over ssh connections. I never use the GUI, just TUI version (so `emacs -nw`) and love it. You can edit files over ssh hops or docker hops using tramp. I don't believe there is a tramp equiv. in other terminal tools. VS Code over SSH is much too heavy handed for quick single file edits but emacs handles it gracefully.by smithza
- > The editors that live in the terminal either have steep learning curves built around modal paradigms, or they are too limited to be genuinely useful.
> txt is not trying to replace your main IDE. It is the editor you reach for when you just need to edit something
These two are in conflict. If you just want to edit something, and don’t know [n]vi[m] or emacs, then use nano. If you want line numbers, code folding, syntax highlighting, etc. then it sounds like you should spend the time to learn a more powerful editor.
Honestly, vi isn’t that hard to learn the absolute basics, and you should spend the 15 minutes to do so, because it’s practically guaranteed to be available everywhere. :wq and i are about all you need to “just edit something.”
by sgarland - I honestly don't get software engineers who don't know basic vim motions and don't even care to learn them. Seriously? They plan never to use `less` and `more`, they won't be reading manpages, they are okay with not knowing what `sed` can do?
I get why people prefer not to use it actively - everyone has their own preference, but choosing to not to know it, at all? Knowing basics of vim for a programmer is like understanding basics of git. It is a must.
by iLemming - I can understand startups relying on AI tools to test out the ideas. But personal/hobby projects? Feels weird. This is not the place to go fast. Take your time, enjoy the process, learn/make things.by rckt
- Since https://github.com/micro-editor/MICRO exists for some years now, a comparison would be welcome.
- Also https://github.com/sinelaw/fresh which is micro "on steroids" (i dislike the expression but can't think of a better one now)by testycool
- While they play up the keyboard-driven functionality, they showcase a pointer-driven workflow in the demonstration gif. Curious choice, no?by _ix
- I came here to say this.
- Since going through the hassle of learning vim I can't use anything else anymore.
And for the use case of "I built txt because I spend most of my time in the terminal, and switching to a different tool just to make a quick edit always felt like friction I did not want. The editors that live in the terminal either have steep learning curves built around modal paradigms, or they are too limited to be genuinely useful."
it's literally only a handful of vim commands and shortcuts you need.
by __fst__ - > Since going through the hassle of learning vim I can't use anything else anymore.
That sounds like an amazing investment, really makes me want to learn it too!
by Joker_vD - vim is not a single concrete editor - it's rather an abstract idea, and ideas do port (if done properly). But some substrates have poor foundation for porting, some have much more flexible base. Every vim plugin for major editors - VSCode, IntelliJ, Sublime, etc. have tons of deficiencies, partly because the platform itself might be prohibiting. In comparison, evil-mode in Emacs is absolutely great, in some cases it is even better than what Vim/Neovim have natively. And that's because of flexibility and malleability of the host platform.by iLemming
- Vim is great and I have 25 years of muscle memory for it. But I'm also interested in trying Kakoune (https://kakoune.org/why-kakoune/why-kakoune.html) -- which I understand also has a VSCode plugin called Dance (https://github.com/71/dance) -- as I've seen somewhat convincing arguments that it is a more powerful model for modal editing.
Instead of "verb object" (eg. delete word or "dw"), it is "object verb" (eg. word delete, or "wd").
In particular, it seems to obsolete "visual mode" from vim (which I use often), because you're essentially always in visual mode. You always get to see a selection before you perform an action. Or at least that's what I understand, I haven't tried it yet.
by haberman - It's a shame that it ever felt like a hassle.
We should be introducing people to vim long before they are learning it under pressure. As you say, it's really not a lot to remember.
by sublinear