Technology Random Access Thoughts

[epzik8]

I've long idly wondered why these numbers always ended in 86. Was there ever a 586?

The original Pentium was the 80586. Intel ran into some legal and trademark issues by trying to trademark just numbers.

As a side note, "Pent" means 5, hence "Pentium" as it was a marketable name for Intel's 586 processors.

[Big John]

^^ Knowing that no interstate highways has those numbers.

[Rothman]

I miss 486...

[ZLoth]

[kphoger]

[youtube

[jeffandnicole]

[youtube

Colleges had courses on how to use the internet in the mid-1990s.

[kphoger]

Colleges had courses on how to use the internet in the mid-1990s.

Yes, I know.  I graduated high school in 1999.

[mgk920]

And now AOL pulling the plug on their dialup service . . . What is the World coming to?!?!

 

Mike

Gotta be honest, I would have guessed that died off years ago.

 

Mike

So no more of those way kewl startup discs in the mail . . .

 

Mike

[Scott5114]

I like the text editor vi, but it was pretty clearly built for a different era of computing and thus a lot of the commands work in ways that are kind of jank by modern standards. Like the way the arrow keys work—if you have text wrapping on and press the up and down keys, rather than going down one screen line, it goes down one logical line (i.e., to the character after the next newline). That is...not exactly what I want.

Fortunately there is a ~/.vimrc file you can edit to tweak this behavior. I found something online to remap j and k so that they do the same thing the arrow keys do in, say, Notepad, or a text edit box in a web browser. (j and k are the default up and down keys for vi because it was written before the arrow keys were invented.) But I want my arrow keys fixed. So I made a minor edit to it to remap the arrows instead of j and k.

Works like a charm...except I forgot which of j and k is up and which is down, since I never use them because why would I? So now when I press the down key on the keyboard the cursor goes up a line.

[TheCatalyst31]

I like the text editor vi, but it was pretty clearly built for a different era of computing and thus a lot of the commands work in ways that are kind of jank by modern standards. Like the way the arrow keys work—if you have text wrapping on and press the up and down keys, rather than going down one screen line, it goes down one logical line (i.e., to the character after the next newline). That is...not exactly what I want.

Fortunately there is a ~/.vimrc file you can edit to tweak this behavior. I found something online to remap j and k so that they do the same thing the arrow keys do in, say, Notepad, or a text edit box in a web browser. (j and k are the default up and down keys for vi because it was written before the arrow keys were invented.) But I want my arrow keys fixed. So I made a minor edit to it to remap the arrows instead of j and k.

Works like a charm...except I forgot which of j and k is up and which is down, since I never use them because why would I? So now when I press the down key on the keyboard the cursor goes up a line.

vi/vim are legendary both for surviving all these years and how esoteric the commands are, to the point where accidentally opening vim and learning how to quit is a rite of passage for new software developers. (:q, or :wq to write, if some poor soul finds this thread while trying to quit vim.) You can apparently be very efficient with it if you learn all of the obscure commands, but I never bothered to learn more than the basics.

Of course, real programmers use a magnetized needle and a steady hand.

[Scott5114]

vi/vim are legendary both for surviving all these years and how esoteric the commands are, to the point where accidentally opening vim and learning how to quit is a rite of passage for new software developers. (:q, or :wq to write, if some poor soul finds this thread while trying to quit vim.) You can apparently be very efficient with it if you learn all of the obscure commands, but I never bothered to learn more than the basics.

I'm competent enough to use it for minor edits to things like config files, but I've been trying to use it more for more routine tasks. In particular, I'd like to get to where I can write prose (especially things like wiki articles) in it—a full screen console with vi in it is about as close to a perfect distraction-free writing environment as you can get.

[ZLoth]

https://cheatography.com/ericg/cheat-sheets/vi-editor/

From my experience, it's helpful to have rudimentary knowledge of vi since every *nix install is going to have it. However, if possible, I try to install nano as an editor. When I worked at a ISP 20 years ago, we used ted.

[kphoger]

When I worked at a ISP 20 years ago, we used ted.

Poor Ted.

[vdeane]

I like the text editor vi, but it was pretty clearly built for a different era of computing and thus a lot of the commands work in ways that are kind of jank by modern standards. Like the way the arrow keys work—if you have text wrapping on and press the up and down keys, rather than going down one screen line, it goes down one logical line (i.e., to the character after the next newline). That is...not exactly what I want.

That might be one reason why programmers like it.  Of course, it sucks for prose (or when I'm editing a paragraph of text on my website).

[Scott5114]

I like the text editor vi, but it was pretty clearly built for a different era of computing and thus a lot of the commands work in ways that are kind of jank by modern standards. Like the way the arrow keys work—if you have text wrapping on and press the up and down keys, rather than going down one screen line, it goes down one logical line (i.e., to the character after the next newline). That is...not exactly what I want.

That might be one reason why programmers like it.  Of course, it sucks for prose (or when I'm editing a paragraph of text on my website).

Here, try my (fixed) ~/.vimrc.

Code Select Expand

set nocompatible
filetype on
filetype plugin on
filetype indent on
syntax on
set number
set shiftwidth=4
set tabstop=4
set expandtab
set nolist wrap linebreak breakat&vim
noremap <expr> <Down> v:count ? '<Down>' : 'gj'
noremap <expr> <Up> v:count ? '<Up>' : 'gk'