I had to learn vi because it was installed everywhere and nano didn't exist yet. I always thought the holy war to be very silly, and even though many treat it as such, there are too many who take it seriously.
I was talking with a sysadmin once who intentionally removed nano and emacs from any system he was granted access to. His explanation was “if they can’t use vim I don’t want them on my machines”
As a VIM user, I don't want you using VIM on my system unless you know how to use it. I don't want you borking fstab or the passwd file or some other important config because you don't know how to quit without saving.
I find vim quicker and easier for quick edits too, mostly because I've not bothered to learn anything but vim since it's on everything (except, for some odd reason, the default build of Gentoo)
Brilliant! I don't entirely disagree with that. I had vim forced on me at my old job, including actual vi on some of the more ancient systems. I got so used to it that I don't really know how to use nano and definitely not emacs.
I never understood what the big deal was. Write. Quit. If you can't remember that 'w' means write and 'q' means quit, I don't know how else to help. Add in some decent options in your vimrc and it is pretty comfortable. I am in no way some guru who knows every shortcut and fancy command out there, but I like using it and it is the first thing I install on a new system.
I am not one to judge what text editor, OS, phone, car, or computer you like. You do you. If I was a sysadmin that had to deal with people who really shouldn't be on those systems and that was an easy way to discourage people from screwing with it, then hell yeah.
Knowing VIM does not make one a better sys-admin. You can be an idiot, and still know how to drive Vi/Vim. There is FAR FAR FAR more to managing an OS and than that. If you think requiring VIM is enough to keep unknowledgeable people away from servers, you are probably the one who shouldn't be managing servers.
In the world of text editors, VIM, specifically NeoVim is the shining light. Standing at the pinnacle of creation at a height that can only be reached by zealous emacs users.
They have a learning curve through. Nano is obviously easier, but it's also just a basic editor.
Jesus, why can't people just expose their drives to cosmic radiation and have it switch the bits in the file? So much time wasted writing useless editors.
I want to use Micro so badly but my fingers only know Nano's nonsense shortcut keys.
Also I couldn't figure out how to make it use real tabs instead of a bunch of spaces. Not great for Python scripts.
I recently worked on a system that had the TERM variable botched and filtered and no nano, just vim. It was all hell. The escape sequences in vim wouldn't work. I ended up suspendig it with ctrl+z, killing it, then editing the config with fucking ed and sed. That hoster sucks.
Vim user here: Nano is a good text editor, takes a lot less training to pick up and use, and it's surprisingly capable. If I'm teaching someone how to use the Linux terminal, I'm going to teach them Nano, because they already have enough to learn. Vim is a separate class all its own.
There's several GB of it sitting in my home directory, which unfortunately my admin limits to several GB, so now my vim search buffer doesn't update anymore until I delete code's cache again.
It doesnt work with sudo though sadly. It's not the biggest problem tho, just a small annoyance, using the occasional sudo nano to edit files isnt a big deal.
For advanced text editing (and project management) though, I have to give a shout out to Obsidian MD (markdown) and whomever made the code plugin for it