[ale] Vim is 20!

[Aaron Ruscetta]

From: Jim Kinney <jim.kinney at gmail.com>
> The best editor EVER turned 20 today. Of course the emacs (l)users don't
> care. They're too busy playing games and having their email read to them to
> get any real WORK done.

> What I found fun was vim was originally intended for the Amiga.
> And now I hand the mic to Aaron...

I never got exposed to the original Vim on the Amiga. By the time
I started to delve seriously into programming a brilliant GUI text editor
named Cygnus ED was the rage -- it was the favorite of the majority
of Amiga programmers I met at devcons and such.  The GUI interface
with pull down menus make it dead simple to use; it could even do
column based highlighting, cut and paste (think table and spreadsheet
editing). With it's tight integration to Amiga's global inter process
AREXX language for it's macros, there was nothing that Cygnus ED
couldn't do. In Macro Record mode, every editing action could be
recorded for replication or subsequent editing (in Cygnus Ed) for
custom re-application.

I ran headlong into Vi on the Unix system terminals at my first "C"
language class at Perimeter College (circa 1990).  I found Vi hugely
frustrating and limited after getting so spoiled by Cygnus ED and
it's GUI on the Amiga .  I did very well with the "C" programming
concepts and course material, but I was totally ready to torch the
terminal and the Vi editor by the time I got to the end of the lab
sessions.  After completing the intro to "C" course with an "A", the
instructor called me saying he appreciated having me in class and
that he thought I had great potential as a programmer.  He all but
offered to pay my tuition if I would continue with the next level
"C" programming course, but I had to pass on the offer because
I couldn't get past my frustration with the Unix Vi text terminal
editing environment after using the Amiga GUI with Cygnus Ed.

Wish I'd known that Vim was available on the Amiga at the time.
I might have made a little more effort to get used to the Vi editor
commands and might have gone a lot further pursuing a full
time programming career.

peace
aaron