Ah, Borland’s IDE! An absolute delight. I’ve yet to find anything modern that matches it. Sure, nostalgia turns everything syrupy, but I actively hunt for excuses to use Free Pascal just to fire up that interface. Okay, fine—I like Pascal too. You caught me.
I also use Sam and Acme from Plan 9 (technically from the excellent plan9port), but let’s be honest: those aren’t IDEs. They’re editors. Tools that let me think instead of wrestle.
There’s a lot we could (and probably should) learn from the old TUIs. For example, it’s perfectly acceptable, even heroic, to spawn a shell from the File menu and run something before returning. Seems people are afraid of losing style points with such grievous actions.
And the keybindings! So many of those classic TUIs adopted WordStar’s sacred keystrokes. They’re burned into my muscle memory so thoroughly that using EMACS feels like trying to type with oven mitts. For years, joe (with the blessed jstar alias) was my editor of choice.
Anyway! Time to boot the Dr. DOS VM, spin the wheel of Advent of Code, and be nostalgically inefficient on purpose.
I also use Sam and Acme from Plan 9 (technically from the excellent plan9port), but let’s be honest: those aren’t IDEs. They’re editors. Tools that let me think instead of wrestle.
There’s a lot we could (and probably should) learn from the old TUIs. For example, it’s perfectly acceptable, even heroic, to spawn a shell from the File menu and run something before returning. Seems people are afraid of losing style points with such grievous actions.
And the keybindings! So many of those classic TUIs adopted WordStar’s sacred keystrokes. They’re burned into my muscle memory so thoroughly that using EMACS feels like trying to type with oven mitts. For years, joe (with the blessed jstar alias) was my editor of choice.
Anyway! Time to boot the Dr. DOS VM, spin the wheel of Advent of Code, and be nostalgically inefficient on purpose.