[HN Gopher] Microsoft Edit
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Microsoft Edit
        
       Author : ethanpil
       Score  : 460 points
       Date   : 2025-06-25 00:07 UTC (22 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (github.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
        
       | anyfoo wrote:
       | Fun. I must admit I don't really know who this is _for_ , but it
       | seems fun.
        
         | DrJokepu wrote:
         | It's right there in the readme actually:
         | 
         | > The goal is to provide an accessible editor that even users
         | largely unfamiliar with terminals can easily use.
        
           | scblock wrote:
           | That may be the written goal, but I doubt that's the actual
           | reason the project exists.
        
             | cosignal wrote:
             | Yeah ... I don't think there's any overlap between "users
             | largely unfamiliar with terminals" who want something easy
             | to use, and 'Linux users who are sufficiently technical
             | that they would even hear about this repo'.
        
               | cAtte_ wrote:
               | well the editor was obviously designed primarily for
               | Windows, not sure why the title says Linux
        
               | zamadatix wrote:
               | The title is a bit confusing depending how you read it.
               | Edit isn't "for" Linux any more than PowerShell was made
               | for Linux to displace bash, zsh, fish, and so on. Both
               | are just also available with binaries "for" Linux.
               | 
               | The previous HN posts which linked to the blog post
               | explaining the tool's background and reason for existing
               | on Windows cover it all a lot better than a random title
               | pointing to the repo.
        
               | egorfine wrote:
               | TIL PowerShell exists for Linux.
               | 
               | But.. why?
        
               | skc wrote:
               | Well why not?
               | 
               | Is there supposed to be a single elected shell for Linux?
               | Powershell on Linux is just one of plenty others.
        
               | egorfine wrote:
               | I'm not against it. Absolutely go for it.
               | 
               | I just wonder what was the reason to port it and then I
               | would like to have a word with a real living person who
               | is actually using that shell.
        
               | MattSteelblade wrote:
               | I believe this was the original announcement
               | https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/powershell-is-
               | open-so.... I have used it on Linux and it is included by
               | default in Kali and ParrotOS.
        
               | WorldMaker wrote:
               | PowerShell lends itself really well to writing cross-
               | platform shell scripts that run the same everywhere you
               | can boot up PowerShell 7+. It's origins in .NET scripting
               | mean that some higher-level idioms were already common in
               | PowerShell script writing even before cross-platform
               | existed, for instance using `$pathINeed = Join-Path
               | $basePath ../sub-folder-name` will handle path separators
               | smartly rather than just trying to string math it.
               | 
               | It's object-oriented approach is nice to work with and
               | provides some nice tools that contrast well with the Unix
               | "everything is text" tooling approach. Anything with a
               | JSON output, for instance, is really lovely to work with
               | `ConvertFrom-Json` as PowerShell objects. (Similar to
               | what you can do with `jq`, but "shell native".) Similarly
               | with `ConvertTo-Json` for anything that takes JSON input,
               | you can build complex PowerShell object structures and
               | then easily pass them as JSON. (I also sometimes use
               | `ConvertTo-Json` for REPL debugging.)
               | 
               | It's also nice that shell script parameter/argument
               | parsing is standardized in PowerShell. I think it makes
               | it easier to start new scripts from scratch. There's a
               | lot of bashisms you can copy and paste to start a bash
               | script, but PowerShell gives you a lot of power out of
               | the box including auto-shorthands and basic usage
               | documentation "for free" with its built-in parameter
               | binding support.
        
               | trelane wrote:
               | Well, _parts_ of it do, anyway.
               | 
               | As with .net, it is not intended to let you easily get
               | _away_ from Microsoft.
               | 
               | https://learn.microsoft.com/en-
               | us/powershell/scripting/whats...
        
               | kevin_thibedeau wrote:
               | There's no shortage of less technical people using nano
               | for editing on Linux servers. Something even more
               | approachable than that would have a user base.
        
               | mikepurvis wrote:
               | Especially noting it's a single binary that's just 222kb
               | on x86_64-- that's an excellent candidate to become an
               | "installed by default" thing on base systems. Vim and
               | emacs are both far too large for that, and even vim-tiny
               | is 1.3MB, while being considerably more hostile to a non-
               | technical user than even vim is.
               | 
               | I can definitely see msedit having a useful place.
        
               | hulitu wrote:
               | Midnight commander comes with mcedit.
        
               | paulfharrison wrote:
               | Here's a scenario. You're running a cluster, and your
               | users are biologists producing large datasets. They need
               | to run some very specific command line software to
               | assemble genomes. They need to edit SLURM scripts over
               | SSH. This is all far outside their comfort zone. You need
               | to point them at a text editor, which one do you choose?
               | 
               | I've met biologists who enjoy the challenge of vim, but
               | they are rare. nano does the job, but it's fugly. micro
               | is a bit better, and my current recommendation. They are
               | not perfect experiences out of the box. If Microsoft can
               | make that out of the box experience better, something
               | they are very good at, then more power to them. If you
               | don't like Microsoft, make something similar.
        
               | hulitu wrote:
               | > You need to point them at a text editor, which one do
               | you choose?
               | 
               | mcedit ?
        
               | 0points wrote:
               | > You're running a cluster, and your users are biologists
               | producing large datasets. They need to run some very
               | specific command line software to assemble genomes. They
               | need to edit SLURM scripts over SSH. This is all far
               | outside their comfort zone. You need to point them at a
               | text editor, which one do you choose?
               | 
               | Wrongly phrased scenario. If you are running this cluster
               | for the biologists, you should build a front end for them
               | to "edit SLURM scripts", or you may find yourself looking
               | for a new job.
               | 
               | > A Bioinformatics Engineer develops software,
               | algorithms, and databases to analyze biological data.
               | 
               | You're an engineer, so why don't you engineer a solution?
        
               | rtpg wrote:
               | I dunno, I spent a lot of years (in high school at least)
               | using Linux but being pretty overwhelmed by using
               | something like vim (and having nobody around to point me
               | to nano).
               | 
               | EDIT.COM, on the other hand... nice and straightforward
               | in my book
        
               | 0points wrote:
               | It's a windows 11 terminal editor. Don't get confused by
               | the fact that it also works on Linux.
        
               | joseda-hg wrote:
               | I dunno, I use edit since I've heard of it instead of
               | figuring out why my vim config breaks on windows
               | 
               | I might use nano via wsl (Or at that point just nvim),
               | but that also has it quirks
               | 
               | It occupies the same space as micro did for me, but it's
               | / it will be preinstalled so it's better (Also a reason I
               | even cared for vi at first)
        
             | justsomehnguy wrote:
             | My guess would be there are some people at MS who, somehow,
             | still can do something fun. Because they are not assigned
             | on the another project on how to make OOBE even more
             | miserable.
             | 
             | /rant Today I spent 3 (three) hours trying to setup a new
             | MSI AIO with Windows Pro. Because even though it's would be
             | joined to the local ADDS and managed from there - I _need_
             | to join some Internet connected network, setup a 3 stupid
             | recovery questions which would make NIST blush and wait
             | another 30 minutes for a forced update download which I
             | cannot skip. Oh, something went wrong - let 's repeat the
             | process 3 times.
        
               | xeonmc wrote:
               | Perhaps those are the things that doesn't take a Ph.D to
               | develop.
        
           | Gormo wrote:
           | There are already plenty of those, such as jed, mcedit, etc.
           | 
           | This particular application is incredibly basic -- much more
           | limited than even EDIT for DOS.
        
             | cool_beanz wrote:
             | Nano gang
        
         | iknowstuff wrote:
         | I'll gladly replace vim with it, especially if it has/gets LSP
         | support or searching via ripgrep. I'm using Helix now but like
         | a good tui.
        
         | tim-- wrote:
         | It's for people that want to use the Windows Terminal to edit
         | files. The old `edit` command has been unsupported on Windows
         | since 2006, so there was no Microsoft-provided editor that
         | could be used in the command line since then.
         | 
         | It's impressive to see how fast this editor is.
         | https://github.com/microsoft/edit/pull/408
         | 
         | > By writing SIMD routines specific to newline seeking, we can
         | bump that up [to 125GB/s]
        
           | _verandaguy wrote:
           | Is... this a meaningful benchmark?
           | 
           | Who's editing files big enough to benefit from 120GBps
           | throughput in any meaningful way on the regular using an
           | interactive editor rather than just pushing it through a
           | script/tool/throwing it into ETL depending on the size and
           | nature of the data?
        
             | tomrod wrote:
             | Challenge. Accepted.
        
             | anyfoo wrote:
             | Not on the regular, but there are definitely times I load
             | positively gigantic files in emacs for various reasons. In
             | those times, emacs asks me if I want to enable "literal"
             | mode. Don't think I'd do it in EDIT, though.
        
             | WD-42 wrote:
             | Who cares? It's fun. Programming can be fun.
        
               | anyfoo wrote:
               | To turn this around, you can have fun _and_ ask if
               | something is meaningful or not outside the fun at the
               | same time. If it is, great. If it 's not, no harm.
        
               | _verandaguy wrote:
               | I'm not saying that doing this can't be fun, or even good
               | to learn off of, but when it's touted as a feature or a
               | spec, I do have to ask if it's a legitimate point.
               | 
               | If you build the world's widest bike, that's cool, and
               | I'm happy you had fun doing it, but it's probably not the
               | most useful optimization goal for a bike.
        
               | WD-42 wrote:
               | Not a great analogy. This editor is really fast. Speed is
               | important, to a point. But having more of it isn't going
               | to hurt anything. It is super fun to write fast code
               | though.
        
               | legends2k wrote:
               | I don't think a sentence in a big report page is counted
               | as touting.
        
             | tim-- wrote:
             | As a specific benchmark, no. But that wasn't the point of
             | linking to the PR. Although the command looks like a basic
             | editor, it is surprisingly featureful.
             | 
             | Fuzzy search, regular expression find & replace.
             | 
             | I wonder how much work is going to continue going into the
             | new command? Will it get syntax highlighting (someone has
             | already forked it and added Python syntax highlighting:
             | https://github.com/gurneesh9/scriptly) and language server
             | support? :)
        
               | _verandaguy wrote:
               | Right, _these_ are more useful features, IMO, than the
               | ability to rip through 125GB of data every second. I can
               | live without that, but syntax highlighting 's a critical
               | feature, and for some languages LSP support is a _really
               | big_ nice-to-have. I think both of those are, in this day
               | and age, really legitimate first-class /built-in
               | features. So are fuzzy searching and PCRE find&replace.
               | 
               | Add on a well-built plugin API, and this will be
               | nominally competitive with the likes of vim and emacs.
        
             | tiagod wrote:
             | I have to scroll through huge files quite frequently, and
             | that's the reason I have Sublime Text installed, as it
             | deals with them very well.
        
               | orthoxerox wrote:
               | I have FAR installed for the same reason.
        
             | magicalhippo wrote:
             | At work we have to modify some 500 MB XML's every now and
             | then, as the source messes them up in non-repeating ways
             | occasionally.
             | 
             | Typically we just hand edit them. Actually been pleasantly
             | surprised at how well VS Code handles it, very snappy.
        
               | pprnm wrote:
               | I use the CudaText for big files. It is like open source
               | Sublime.
        
             | 0points wrote:
             | For a text editor, yes, absolutely.
             | 
             | As developers, we rotinely need to work with large data
             | sets, may it be gigabytes of logs, csv data, sql dump or
             | what have you.
             | 
             | Not being able to open and edit those files means you cant
             | do your job.
        
               | Geezus_42 wrote:
               | But are you really trying to do that on a Windows Server?
               | I feel like there are better tools for the job.
        
               | delfinom wrote:
               | "Better tools for the job" isn't always "the tool
               | currently bringing in the $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$". So you live
               | with it.
               | 
               | Sure, maybe by switching to linux you can squeeze out an
               | extra CPU core's worth of performance after you fire your
               | entire staff and replace them with Linux experienced
               | developers, and then rewrite everything to work on Linux.
               | 
               | Or, live with it and make money money money money.
        
               | trelane wrote:
               | > make money money money money.
               | 
               | Subject, of course, to Microsoft allowing you to continue
               | to use their software.
        
               | _verandaguy wrote:
               | I work exclusively outside of the windows ecosystem, so
               | my usual go to would be to pipe this through some
               | filtering tools in the CLI _long_ before I crack them
               | open with an editor.
        
               | trelane wrote:
               | You could make an argument for emacs, but probably not
               | using emacs as a pure text editor.
        
           | cerved wrote:
           | Probably more like _need_ to use it. Basically nano for
           | windows
        
           | axpvms wrote:
           | That's pretty handy. I was having to use bash -c "vi
           | myfile.txt" which was a bit annoying.
        
             | jcotton42 wrote:
             | If you were doing that to invoke WSL, note that these days
             | you can do `wsl command arg arg arg...`
        
         | kgwxd wrote:
         | It's a huge improvement over notepad
        
         | z3ratul163071 wrote:
         | this is for me, as saner replacement for nano in the terminal,
         | since i hate vi.
        
       | orsenthil wrote:
       | So much excitement that this got posted 3 times in a week
       | 
       | 1. By the author - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44034961
       | 2. Ubuntu Publication -
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44306892
       | 
       | And this post.
        
         | johannes1234321 wrote:
         | There is also this:
         | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44341462
        
       | pxc wrote:
       | I used to recommend micro[1] to people like those in the target
       | audience of this editor. I wonder if that should change or not.
       | 
       | --
       | 
       | 1: https://micro-editor.github.io/
        
         | seabrookmx wrote:
         | IMO it should not.
         | 
         | `edit` doesn't even support syntax highlighting (atleast, out
         | of the box when I tried it).
        
           | Litruv wrote:
           | I think you missed the point of edit.
        
             | bapak wrote:
             | I think not. Edit is to edit files in the terminal. What
             | kind of files do you expect people to edit in the terminal?
             | Most certainly files that would benefit from colors, not
             | prose.
        
               | shakna wrote:
               | A lot of authors, myself included, want a "distraction
               | free" editor. Its a whole over-populated market segment.
               | 
               | Prose thrives in the terminal. Ice and Fire was written
               | in WordStar, as just one popular example.
        
               | antonvs wrote:
               | Is _that_ why the series ground to a halt
        
               | red_admiral wrote:
               | Rachel Kroll once posted that she writes her posts in
               | nano, with the distraction of syntax highlighting turned
               | off: https://rachelbythebay.com/w/2011/09/24/editor/
               | 
               | I can't find the link but I think at some point she
               | compiled her own nano with some "helpful" feature patched
               | out again.
        
               | kristopolous wrote:
               | I met someone recently that still uses WordStar. Yes I'm
               | serious. He runs it in QEMU on FreeDOS. He's a writer for
               | a living.
        
               | 4k93n2 wrote:
               | George R.R. Martin still uses Wordstar as well!
        
               | legends2k wrote:
               | Sure, there are always exceptions but they're only that,
               | exceptions.
        
             | seabrookmx wrote:
             | I think you missed the question I was answering in my
             | comment.
        
               | JdeBP wrote:
               | There's an underlying assumption about "target audience
               | for this editor" that you both share, that others, I
               | suspect quite a few others, do not.
               | 
               | For starters, there's your assumption that there is
               | "syntax" to be highlighted. Not every text file is
               | something written in a computer programming language.
        
               | seabrookmx wrote:
               | You're right, I do assume most (90+%? of) people that are
               | looking for a terminal editor are likely developers.
               | 
               | In fact I'd put money on it, but sadly do not have any
               | evidence to back it up.
               | 
               | If you have evidence to the contrary I'd be intrigued!
        
           | _flux wrote:
           | It might in the future, though, as the main developer has
           | opened an issue about it:
           | https://github.com/microsoft/edit/issues/18
           | 
           | The trick is doing it while keeping the binary size small, so
           | tree sitter is not an option.
        
             | ComputerGuru wrote:
             | Vim (and so many other editors, too) supported syntax
             | highlighting for decades before TreeSitter even existed.
             | Let's not act as if this is a novel challenge.
        
         | prmoustache wrote:
         | Last time I checked, micro should have been called macro based
         | on the binary file size.
        
           | 3836293648 wrote:
           | Well, it is orders of magnitude larger than nano, so...
        
           | sime2009 wrote:
           | Seriously? We're going to complain about a couple megs in a
           | text editor in the year 2025?
        
             | mixmastamyk wrote:
             | Yes, couldn't use on my router because of its size. No
             | reason for a TUI to be so big. Advanced features outside of
             | syntax highlighting not useful. Should have a light
             | version.
             | 
             | I installed nano with CUA keybindings instead.
        
             | prmoustache wrote:
             | Like my mother say. Small stream makes huge rivers.
             | 
             | Not caring about a couple of megs here and there is what
             | makes some modern systems so bloated.
        
           | pxc wrote:
           | Isn't the relatively large binary just because it's written
           | in Golang? Go executables each ship their own copy of the Go
           | runtime. That alone accounts for a big chunk of small
           | programs like this.
           | 
           | Nano also links against ncurses, which is about as big as the
           | compressed tarball for micro. I'm looking at the dependency
           | closures of each right now in nix-tree[1], and micro's
           | closure's total size is 15.04 MiB while nano's is 12.78 MiB--
           | not really "orders of magnitude" (as a sibling commenter
           | suggests) when you look at it like that.
           | 
           | Admittedly, nano's dependencies (`file` and `ncurses`, on my
           | system) are likely to ship as part of the "base system" of
           | any Linux distro anyway; the real size it adds to any distro
           | is negligible. But there's no indication to me that micro is
           | meaningfully "bloated", as the meme goes; it seems like what
           | is required to run it is reasonable and comparable to other
           | tools that serve the same purpose.
           | 
           | --
           | 
           | 1: See: https://github.com/utdemir/nix-tree ; Try `nix run
           | nixpkgs#nix-tree -- $(nix build --no-link --json nixpkgs#nano
           | | jq -r .[0].outputs.out)`
        
             | prmoustache wrote:
             | The reason may help understand why but it is not really
             | interesting from the point of view of the user or those
             | packaging it with their OS.
        
         | smartmic wrote:
         | There is also dte[1]. It hits exactly the same notch and offers
         | an extremely lean editor with Unicode support, CUA key bindings
         | and much more. It has replaced nano as my terminal editor.
         | 
         | [1]: https://craigbarnes.gitlab.io/dte/
        
           | sneak wrote:
           | Why are you opposed to learning vi which is already installed
           | everywhere?
        
             | 4ggr0 wrote:
             | as someone who uses CLI text editors frequently, but not
             | often enough to build the muscle memory which remembers VI
             | shortcuts, i really appreciate simple text editors.
             | 
             | i know that i can press like 3-4 arbitrary buttons to mark
             | a block to move it to a different place - how about i just
             | mark it with my cursor and CTRL-X CTRL-V, like every
             | freaking other program out there.
             | 
             | i appreciate that i got VI on freshly installed or secured
             | servers, but for things i use daily, i just want it to be
             | KISS. already counting on people answering 'but vim is easy
             | and simple'. opinions differ i guess.
             | 
             | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9n1dtmzqnCU
        
             | IshKebab wrote:
             | Because vi has all the usability of a keyboard made out of
             | hedgehogs.
        
               | s1mplicissimus wrote:
               | I wouldn't consider vi usability to be overall bad. Sure,
               | affordance ("is it easy grasp which moves i can make
               | without affording much cognitive effort?") is terrible.
               | 
               | Setting up a decent environment is also a huge pain to
               | get started with, but nowadays you can just hop into a
               | prewarmed pool with premade setups like Normalvim or
               | LunarVim.
               | 
               | But usability is not just "is it easy to learn", it's
               | also "once i know it, how hard is it to use"
               | 
               | Once the moves are ingrained in your (muscle-)memory it
               | becomes so incredibly efficient. di{, dat, yaf etc. are
               | just the low hanging fruit, once you start with regex,
               | macros and plugins the fun really begins.
        
               | sneak wrote:
               | vi isn't usable. it sucks. but the facts are it's
               | installed everywhere and you can learn how to use it in
               | 10-15 minutes. easier to patch your ignorance of basic vi
               | than it is to install software on every machine you'll
               | ever edit on.
        
             | smartmic wrote:
             | I learned vi a long time ago and use it when no other
             | editor is at hand. In fact, I am using several editors
             | simultaneously, depending on the task at hand and what is
             | availabe. I stumbled over dte because I like to try out new
             | things. And because dte hits many sweet spots for me, I
             | installed it on machines where I often need a terminal
             | editor. Binding myself to only one tool just because I
             | learned to use it at some point in time is not my
             | philosophy. Thankfully, the open source world offers so
             | many alternatives and innovations, so that there is
             | something for almost all tastes and habits. It comes with
             | no costs besides building muscle memory to switch as needed
             | and wanted.
        
             | mixmastamyk wrote:
             | Learning CUA once is more realistic/convenient for most
             | people.
        
             | pxc wrote:
             | I like vim a lot, and I use vim-style bindings wherever I
             | can.
             | 
             | But before I learned to ride a bike, I used training
             | wheels, and before I learned enough vim to _enjoy_ using
             | vim, I leaned on nano.
             | 
             | When someone is first learning to explore GNU/Linux, or
             | even to dig into the Unix guts of macOS, they're learning a
             | _whole new world_ , not just a new text editor. For some
             | people, strategic bridges to what they know (like CUA or
             | Windows-like shortcuts) can make this process more fun and
             | less fatiguing. Sometimes that difference is decisive in
             | keeping someone motivated to learn and explore more.
             | 
             | Anyway, I think vim is worth learning (and maybe some of
             | the quirks of old-school vi, if you expect to work on old
             | or strange systems). It's not a matter of _if_ I recommend
             | that someone learn vim, but _when_. And until it 's time
             | for them to explore an editor deeply, micro seems like a
             | great fit for most people.
             | 
             | I also want to say: as enthusiasts of Unix-like operating
             | systems, or as professionals who appreciate some of their
             | enduring strengths, should we really embrace a "because
             | it's there" doctrine? Isn't that same kind of thinking
             | responsible for huge, frustrating piles of mediocrity that
             | we work with every day and resent?
             | 
             | ss someone who loves an ecosystem built first by volunteers
             | as "just a hobby, nothing big and serious", I will it's
             | sad, if not hypocritical, to dismiss software projects just
             | because they aren't already dominant players. Most software
             | I love was once marginal, something its users went to
             | lengths to install on the systems they used because they
             | enjoyed it more than the defaults. We should, to the extent
             | practical, try to leave a little room for that in the way
             | we approach computing-- even as we get older and grumpier.
        
             | JdeBP wrote:
             | You realize that you're asking this in a discussion of a
             | tool that is intended to be installed out of the box on
             | Microsoft Windows, where vi _is not_ installed out of the
             | box, right? Your  "everywhere" doesn't include the primary
             | use case for what is being headlined here.
        
           | whou wrote:
           | I'd recommend everyone to take a look and read some of dte's
           | source code. It's a great example of beautifully written
           | modern C code.
        
         | mattbee wrote:
         | And you can get it on Windows with just "winget install
         | zyedidia.micro". Reminds me of 8 & 16-bit editors of a similar
         | era.
        
       | jksmith wrote:
       | This is just a "because I wanted to" project. And I get that;
       | done a lot of those myself just to understand what the hell was
       | going on. But the rewrite of turbo vision into FPC and compiling
       | to half a dozen targets has been around for 20 years. Turbo
       | vision is probably the best text mode windowing library in
       | existence. The cool fun kicks in when you can map a whole text
       | screen to an array like so: var Screen: Array[1..80,1..25] Of
       | Byte Absolute $B800; // or something like that as i recall
       | 
       | What turbo vision brought to the game was movable, (non) modal
       | windows. Basically a lot of rewriting that array in a loop.
       | Pretty snappy. I made a shitload of money with that library.
        
         | throwaway127482 wrote:
         | I am curious about how you made money with it, if you don't
         | mind sharing.
        
           | jksmith wrote:
           | My first company out of uni was a company that sold a tv
           | advertising application written in dos. It did all the
           | reports, put together spot advert packages, measuring reach
           | and frequency, cost per point, etc. Used Neilsen ratings for
           | data. The company at the time paid commissions along with
           | salary to programmers. The app still lives on in windows, but
           | I've been out of that game for decades. Written in TP for
           | dos, then Delphi for windows.
        
             | TheAmazingRace wrote:
             | Honestly dude, this is clever. Good on you for finding an
             | opportunity to make a useful tool and you made out like a
             | bandit in the process. :)
        
               | jksmith wrote:
               | That was the toolchain that my company used. Turbo vision
               | was a Borland product, back when Philippe Khan was
               | running the company. We were that ahead of the curve for
               | "shrinkwrapped software development" at the time. That
               | legacy, Delphi and FPC still maintain the standard for
               | desktop, native dev, really for the last 30 years.
        
               | esafak wrote:
               | Kahn is still pretty active: https://philippekahn.com/
        
               | velcrovan wrote:
               | I skimmed the blog. I detect LLM output, but no person.
        
               | natebc wrote:
               | I think we're going to have to get used to feeling like
               | this. Makes me sad a little.
        
               | rollcat wrote:
               | The broadcast industry continues to move at a slow pace
               | compared to IT, and understandably - it's live TV, you
               | need things to work 24/7/365.
               | 
               | That means there's always an opportunity for the
               | resourceful.
        
         | dleslie wrote:
         | For those curious, here is a modern port of the C++ Turbo
         | Vision that also supports Unicode:
         | 
         | https://github.com/magiblot/tvision
        
           | san1927 wrote:
           | lmao is any body still using turbo cpp?
        
             | srvmshr wrote:
             | You'll be surprised if I tell you several universities in
             | India have not updated their curriculum in a very long time
             | & Turbo C++ (& its non-standard C++ flavor) is the weapon
             | of choice. The school board in the '00s, which preferred to
             | teach a programming language for CS, used to have it
             | curriculum around this C++ dialect. I have passed my high-
             | school board examinations with this language (It was known
             | to be already outdated in 2004. The smart kids knew the
             | real C++ was programming by Visual Studio 6 ecosystem. But
             | one had to still deal with it to clear the exams.)
             | 
             | Admitted, a few things have changed in last couple of
             | years. MATLAB is being replaced by Python. Teaching 8085 &
             | 8051 is being replaced by RasPi/Arduino. 8086 is taught
             | alongside ARM & RISC, and not touted as SoTA.
             | 
             | I last saw Turbo being used in 2016-17 in a university
             | setting, inside a DosBox (because Windows 7+ have dropped
             | support for such old programs). Insane, but true.
        
               | zozbot234 wrote:
               | Nice. This editor could see a lot of use in such places
               | if it gains developer-oriented features such as LSP, DAP
               | and tree-sitter parsers. As a Rust-written editor, it
               | will probably be quite a bit easier on resources than the
               | usual modern choices which generally involve VSCode or
               | Jetbeans plus language-specific plugins.
        
               | ashoeafoot wrote:
               | embrace. extend. deadend.
        
               | Arnavion wrote:
               | Yeah, I also learned C++ via Turbo C++ in school in India
               | in the early 2000s. Googling for "conio.h" shows Indians
               | still talking about it in blogs and C/C++ forums as of
               | 2024.
        
               | ethbr1 wrote:
               | > _You 'll be surprised if I tell you several
               | universities in India have not updated their curriculum
               | in a very long time_
               | 
               | I once asked an Indian colleague why Indians use US/UK-
               | nonstandard English like "kindly", "do the needful", and
               | "revert".
               | 
               | He thought about it a minute, then said "Oh, the texts
               | everyone uses to learn English say that proper letters
               | must always begin with 'Kindly,'".
               | 
               | Sokath, his eyes uncovered.
        
             | keyle wrote:
             | I wish I was.
        
             | dleslie wrote:
             | OpenWatcom is the preferred choice of those still writing
             | DOS applications, but there are those that still use Turbo
             | C++ for the nostalgia.
        
               | iforgotpassword wrote:
               | Oh, a few years ago I wanted to write a simple program
               | for dos. Since this is a Linux-only household otherwise,
               | I was delighted to see OpenWatcom has a Linux port. I
               | spent a good half hour trying to get a simple first
               | version of the program I wanted to write running, but it
               | always crashed right away. I simplified more and more
               | until I basically arrived at hello world. On a hunch I
               | ran the windows version of OpenWatcom with wine, and lo
               | and behold, the program ran flawlessly! Once I googled
               | that I found a couple of forum threads where people went
               | like "yeah sure the Linux port produces broken binaries"
               | because of course.
               | 
               | It's never the compiler until it's the compiler. Just
               | didn't expect it during some simple fun coding at home.
               | :)
        
             | nazgulsenpai wrote:
             | Core memory unlocked... When I was ~10-12, I asked my dad
             | (who knew nothing but thought he knew everything about
             | computers) how to make programs for Windows because I
             | couldn't in QBasic. His answer was "with C++!". He came
             | home with a book Learn C++ In 24 Hours that had Turbo C++
             | on a single 3.5" floppy disk. Naturally, that did not work,
             | but I still had fun failing to compile every program I
             | attempted to write.
        
         | electroly wrote:
         | Every time I see a new modern TUI framework, my disappointment
         | is the same: "Oh. This isn't as good as Turbo Vision."
        
           | wenc wrote:
           | Turbo Vision was truly immersive. I used it in Turbo C and
           | also in Paradox 4.5.
           | 
           | So good.
        
             | ByteDrifter wrote:
             | Funny how something that ran in a tiny box on a 386 could
             | feel more responsive than some modern GUIs. Turbo Vision
             | really nailed the basics.
        
               | kgwxd wrote:
               | I swear the characters appear on the screen before I
               | press the keys when I'm in a real (not emulated) Linux
               | terminal. I can't feel the lag as I'm typing this comment
               | into a basic textarea, but it's clearly there, because a
               | terminal feels magical.
        
           | no_wizard wrote:
           | I always thought Charm was pretty robust as far as TUI tools
           | go[0]
           | 
           | [0]: https://charm.sh/
        
         | nathell wrote:
         | array[1..25, 1..80] of Word absolute $B800:0000.
         | 
         | Arrays in TP were laid out in row-major order, and each
         | character was represented by two bytes, one denoting the
         | character itself and the other the attributes
         | (foreground/background color and blinking). So, even better,
         | array[1..25, 1..80] of packed record ch: char; attr: byte end
         | absolute $B800:0000.
         | 
         | Replace $B800 with $B000 for monochrome text display (mode 7),
         | e.g., on the Hercules.
        
         | TiredOfLife wrote:
         | > This is just a "because I wanted to" project.
         | 
         | It's not. They needed a small TUI editor that was bundled with
         | Windows and worked over ssh.
         | 
         | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44034961
        
         | macjohnmcc wrote:
         | I'd love for an interface like that on VSCode that runs in a
         | terminal even remotely.
        
       | ocdtrekkie wrote:
       | It'd be nice if they didn't recommend winget for installation
       | though. winget is an _egregious_ security risk that Microsoft has
       | just like pretended follows even minimal security practices,
       | despite just launching four years ago with no protection from bad
       | actors whatsoever and then never implementing any improvements
       | since.
        
         | easton wrote:
         | disclaimer: I used to commit to winget a lot and now I don't.
         | 
         | ...but is it really less secure than brew or choco? The
         | installers are coming from reasonably trusted sources and are
         | scanned for malware by MS, a community contributor has to
         | approve the manifest changes, and the manifests themselves
         | can't contain arbitrary code outside of the linked executable.
         | Feels about as good as you can get without requiring the ISVs
         | themselves to maintain repos.
        
           | ocdtrekkie wrote:
           | The installers are coming from random people on the Internet.
           | Most software repositories have trusted contributors and a
           | policy of requiring a piece of software be arguably worthy of
           | inclusion. Perhaps because Microsoft is afraid to pick
           | winners, every piece of garbage is allowed on winget, and
           | there's no way to restrict who can make changes to what
           | packages.
           | 
           | There are ISVs that would like to lock down their software so
           | they can maintain it but a trillion dollar company couldn't
           | spare a dollar to figure out a "business process" to do this.
           | As far as I know, Microsoft has a single employee involved
           | who has laughed off any security concerns with "well the
           | automated malware scanner would find it".
           | 
           | The "community contributors" were just... people active on
           | GitHub when they launched it. Was anyone vetted in any way?
           | No.
           | 
           | The Microsoft Store has actual app reviewers, winget has...
           | "eh, lgtm".
        
             | 90s_dev wrote:
             | The policy of including the author's name next to the
             | project name, along with some indication that it really is
             | the author and not an imposter, I think that's probably the
             | best we're ever going to get, since at that point it just
             | comes down to community trust.
        
         | dale_huevo wrote:
         | winget is just Windows developers' version of _curl | bash_.
         | Yet another example of Microsoft copying Linux features.
        
           | ocdtrekkie wrote:
           | Except curl | bash definitely executes code by the author
           | controlling the URL you put in, and if the URL is HTTPS, in a
           | reasonably secure fashion.
           | 
           | There is no validation when you winget whether or not the
           | executable is from the official source or that a third party
           | contributor didn't tamper with how it's maintained.
        
             | dale_huevo wrote:
             | If you think HTTPS is performing code validation I have
             | news for you.
             | 
             | HTTPS only guarantees the packets containing the unverified
             | malicious code are not tampered with from the server to
             | you. A server which could very well be compromised and
             | alternate code put in its place.
             | 
             | You are drawing an egregious apples-to-oranges comparison
             | here. Please re-read what you said.
             | 
             | You could serve _digitally signed code_ over plain HTTP and
             | it would be more secure than your example over HTTPS.
             | Unfortunately there are a lot of HTTPS old wives ' tales
             | that many misinformed developers believe in.
        
             | tim-- wrote:
             | > in a reasonably secure fashion
             | 
             | It's trivial for a remote server to hand two different
             | versions of a script with the traditional `curl | bash`
             | pipeline. https://lukespademan.com/blog/the-dangers-of-
             | curlbash/
             | 
             | There is 0 validation that the script that you are piping
             | into bash is the script that you expect. Even just
             | validating the command by copying and pasting the URL in a
             | browser -- or using curl and piping into more/less is not
             | enough to protect you.
        
               | ToValueFunfetti wrote:
               | The parent is talking about MITM, which is prevented with
               | TLS and curl but not winget. They are saying curl is
               | strictly better, not that it is impenetrable. If you
               | trust the domain owner, you can trust curl | bash, but
               | you can't trust winget
        
               | tim-- wrote:
               | Why can't I trust winget?
               | 
               | It's not hard to run the `show` command to see what a
               | winget install will do. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-
               | us/windows/package-manager/wi...
               | 
               | It's easy enough to view the manifests (eg,
               | https://github.com/microsoft/winget-
               | pkgs/blob/2ecf2187ea0bf1...) and arguably, is better then
               | the protection for MITM that you would get using naked
               | cURL & Bash, simply because there are file hashes for all
               | of the installer files provided by a third party.
               | 
               | > They are saying curl is strictly better, not that it is
               | impenetrable
               | 
               | Right. But it arguably is not strictly better.
               | 
               | > You can't trust winget
               | 
               | Again, this is not backed up by anything. I have trust in
               | winget. I can trust that the manifest has at least been
               | vetted by a human, and that the application that will be
               | installed should be the one that I requested. I can not
               | trust that this will happen with curl | bash. If the
               | application that is installed is not the one that I
               | requested, there is tooling a process to sort out why
               | that did not happen, and a way to flag it so that it
               | doesn't happen to other users. I don't have this with
               | curl | bash.
        
               | bee_rider wrote:
               | >> Except curl | bash definitely executes code by the
               | author controlling the URL you put in, and if the URL is
               | HTTPS, in a reasonably secure fashion.
               | 
               | > It's trivial for a remote server to hand two different
               | versions of a script with the traditional `curl | bash`
               | pipeline.
               | 
               | I'm confused by this; it seems to be written in the tone
               | of a correction but you both seem to be saying that you
               | get whatever the server sends. (?)
        
               | tim-- wrote:
               | > you both seem to be saying that you get whatever the
               | server sends
               | 
               | Yes, but I am also saying that you can't verify that the
               | script that is run on one machine with a pipe is the same
               | script that runs on a second machine with a pipe.
               | 
               | The key part of the original statement is the server can
               | choose to send different scripts based on different
               | factors. A curl&bash script on machine 1 does not
               | necessarily mean the same curl&bash script will be run on
               | machine 2.
               | 
               | The tooling provided by a `curl | bash` pipeline provides
               | no security at all.
               | 
               | With winget, there is at least tooling to be able to see
               | that the same file (with the same hash) will be
               | downloaded and installed.
               | 
               | There are ways to do this better, for example, check out
               | https://hashbang.sh. It includes a GPG signature that is
               | verified against the install script, before it is passed
               | to curl.
        
             | dgfitz wrote:
             | curl | bash is absolutely on my very short list of "things
             | I'll never do" and I wince when I see it. rm -rf starting
             | from / is another. I watched someone type in (as root) "rm
             | -rf / home/user/folder" once. By the time I realized what
             | had happened it was too late.
        
           | TiredOfLife wrote:
           | Windows already has
           | 
           | irm <URL> | iex
        
       | 486sx33 wrote:
       | Why should "ms-edit" be avoided ?
        
       | LAC-Tech wrote:
       | Needs LSP and Tree-Sitter :)
        
         | z3ratul163071 wrote:
         | and scripting :)
        
           | tonyedgecombe wrote:
           | I'd quite like to see VSCode for the terminal.
        
           | trinix912 wrote:
           | Oh yes, it needs VBScript support ;)
        
         | oliverkwebb wrote:
         | If the editor focused on becoming an IDE instead of being
         | idiot-proof and cleanly designed, what would distinguish it
         | from the 1,000 other editor projects?
        
       | jedisct1 wrote:
       | Probably entirely AI-generated.
        
       | 90s_dev wrote:
       | I don't understand why they want to go with DLLs for scripting
       | instead of WASM + wamr which is _really_ small. Maybe I 'm just
       | really inexperienced in this space.
        
         | vunderba wrote:
         | The possibility of using WASM was _at least_ under discussion
         | last month:
         | 
         | https://github.com/microsoft/edit/issues/17
        
       | kgwxd wrote:
       | Runs on Windows too! It has "Redo", not to be confused with "Undo
       | Undo". Unfixed-width Tabs are a huge leap forward. LF, sans CR,
       | will cut your file sizes in half.
        
       | pcunite wrote:
       | Back in 1993, I would open up binary files in edit and enjoy
       | seeing hearts.
        
         | samplatt wrote:
         | That, the DOS defrag visualisation, and the hex-editing my own
         | savegames is pretty much why I'm a developer today.
        
           | diggan wrote:
           | Ah, the memory of going to bed while the 500MB harddrive
           | defrags over-night, sleeping next to the endless clicking and
           | spinning
        
       | xyst wrote:
       | It will take more than nostalgia and rust to tear me away from my
       | neovim setup that has been built up/improved on over the years.
       | Lsp, dap, autocompletion, aliases and bindings for each
       | programming languages. Lazily loaded of course so it's still
       | snappy.
       | 
       | Manage configuration, and external dependencies such as lsps with
       | nix.
       | 
       | Then have separate nix shells for each project to load tooling
       | and other dependencies in an isolated/repeatable session. Add in
       | direnv to make it more seamless development experience.
        
         | watusername wrote:
         | You are not the target audience. This is aimed at casual users
         | and beginners, and it's already in a good shape to replace nano
         | with its user-friendly, mouse-enabled TUI.
        
           | encom wrote:
           | >in a good shape to replace nano
           | 
           | ...
           | 
           | Anyways, here's how to tell if your LED sign is cheap!
        
         | legends2k wrote:
         | Huge +1, same for me, but with GNU Emacs instead of neovim but
         | can completely appreciate the philosophy.
        
       | umeshunni wrote:
       | Can this be ported to MacOS?
        
         | watusername wrote:
         | It already works? There just isn't an official build yet - just
         | `cargo run` yourself.
        
         | jll29 wrote:
         | 219232 bytes binary if compiled for Apple silicon (ARM).
        
         | stuaxo wrote:
         | Its pretty easy to build there, I've tried this on MacOS and
         | Linux.
         | 
         | The one thing that vexed me for something based on edit, was
         | CTRL+P being hijacked for something that isn't print, is like
         | we forgot about about CUA over the last 15 years.
        
           | dgellow wrote:
           | Not an emacs user I assume?
        
         | ioma8 wrote:
         | It works on MacOs since it was published some two weeks ago. I
         | have been using it since then.
        
       | 1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote:
       | No musl binary. For glibc Linux distributions only perhaps.
        
         | rahen wrote:
         | Just build it yourself. Or you can install glibc on both Void
         | and Alpine, if you want the pre-built binary.
        
         | 1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote:
         | What about BSD
        
       | fsniper wrote:
       | Microsoft loves to own general terminology like "edit" for their
       | products. I have no idea how this flys.
       | 
       | SqlServer like it's the one that found sql or it's the only
       | product that serves sql.
        
         | red_admiral wrote:
         | The copy command is called "copy" which kind of makes sense? I
         | remember once seeing a colleagues .bashrc with things like
         | "alias copy=cp". Flags won't work the same way of course.
         | 
         | Sure "chcp" is a mouthful, but "del" or "erase" makes as much
         | sense as learning that "rm" is short for remove. You pick up
         | either convention quickly enough, except that I'm constantly
         | using "where" when I meant "which". Maybe I should make an
         | alias or something.
         | 
         | Don't get me started on powershell's look-we-can-use-proper-
         | words-lets-see-how-long-we-can-make-this.
        
         | delfinom wrote:
         | >I have no idea how this flys.
         | 
         | They aren't trademarking it and probably can't.
         | 
         | But there's no reason they anyone can't use generic naming for
         | their products. Many software applications do and quite frankly
         | its more descriptive to attracting new users than coming up
         | with non-real names.
         | 
         | I would aruge the only reason made up names exist is to keep
         | marketing departments employed trying to explain to users what
         | they are needlessly.
        
         | not_a_bot_4sho wrote:
         | I know what you mean but everyone does this.
         | 
         | Apple has Pages, Numbers, Keynote, etc. Google has Drive, Docs,
         | Sheets, etc. Meta has Messenger. Far too many examples to list.
         | 
         | Conversely, it would be ridiculous to use non-obvious names.
        
       | tempire wrote:
       | fake. it's not blue.
        
       | andrewstuart wrote:
       | I love edit.
       | 
       | It was my favorite editor back in the old days.
       | 
       | It worked, did the basics really well and got the job done. Glad
       | to see it's back.
        
       | pulkitsh1234 wrote:
       | Geniunely curious, how projects like these get approved in an org
       | at the scale of Microsoft? Is this like a side project by some
       | devs or part of some product roadmap? How did they convince the
       | leadership to spend time on this?
        
         | dark-star wrote:
         | As they explained, they needed a text editor that works in a
         | command line (for Windows Core server installs), works across
         | SSH (because for a while now Windows included an SSH Server so
         | you can completely manage it through SSH), and can be used by
         | non-vi-experienced Windows administrators (i.e. a modeless
         | editor).
        
           | llarsson wrote:
           | Telling people to use nano would of course have been next to
           | impossible. Much easier to rewrite a DOS-era editor in Rust,
           | naturally.
        
             | dark-star wrote:
             | does nano support mouse usage? It doesn't seem to work for
             | me (but maybe it just needs to be enabled somewhere)
             | 
             | I guess they thought that inheriting 25 years of C code was
             | more trouble than designing a new editor from scratch. But
             | you'd have to ask the devs why they decided to go down that
             | route
        
               | Elfener wrote:
               | > does nano support mouse usage?
               | 
               | Yes, but you have to put `set mouse` into your nanorc.
        
             | red_admiral wrote:
             | This way gets coolness points, HN headlines, makes the
             | programmers who wrote it happy, and probably is a
             | contribution to making a couple of autistic people feel
             | included.
             | 
             | Rust + EDITOR.COM is kind of like remaking/remastering an
             | old video game.
        
             | oersted wrote:
             | micro would have been an even better choice, the UX is
             | impressively close to something like Sublime Text for a
             | TUI, and very comfortable for those not used to modal
             | editors.
        
               | aembleton wrote:
               | This is the first time I've heard of micro. More info
               | here: https://micro-editor.github.io/
        
               | subjectsigma wrote:
               | I like micro and use it occasionally. I like this even
               | more. I booted up the editor and instantly thought "it
               | would be nice if there was a clickable buffer list right
               | about..." and then realized my mouse was hovering over
               | it. My next instant thought was that micro should have
               | implemented this feature a long time ago
        
               | mixmastamyk wrote:
               | It doesn't have a menu for windows devs, and is supposed
               | to be small and light. Two strikes against.
        
             | nmeofthestate wrote:
             | nano's great but the shortcuts are a bit oddball, from the
             | perspective of a Windows guy.
        
             | Kwpolska wrote:
             | > rewrite
             | 
             | This is not a rewrite. Maybe it's slightly inspired by the
             | old thing, especially with having GUI-style clickable menus
             | (something not seen often in terminal editors), but it's
             | much more modern.
        
               | dark-star wrote:
               | I still see it as rewrite even if you only use the
               | original as inspiration. But that's just semantics
        
               | dmd wrote:
               | If they hadn't called it "edit" you wouldn't have thought
               | of it as a rewrite.
        
               | TiredOfLife wrote:
               | It's no semantics. It's just a lie
        
               | Gormo wrote:
               | It does seem "modern" in the sense that it is incredibly
               | limited in functionality (EDIT.COM from DOS is much more
               | full-featured) and deviates from well-established UI
               | conventions.
               | 
               | CUA-style menubars aren't that uncommon in textmode
               | editors. Midnight Commander's editor has traditional
               | menubars with much more extensive functionality, as does
               | jedsoft.org's Jed editor. Both of these also support
               | mouse input on the TTY console via GPM, not just within a
               | graphical terminal.
        
             | JdeBP wrote:
             | The developer actually explained, on Hacker News just over
             | a month ago, some of the engineering choices that ruled out
             | nano.
             | 
             | * https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44034961
        
         | zamalek wrote:
         | A text editor is an obvious target for copilot integration.
        
         | sublimefire wrote:
         | Each group needs to do something and they come up with the
         | ideas. Sometimes it is driven by various leaders, e.g. "use
         | copilot". Sometimes it is an idea from some hackerdayz event
         | which gets expanded. Sometimes this is driven in research units
         | where you have a bunch of technical people twiddling their
         | thumbs. Sometimes this is an idea that goes through deep
         | analysis and multiple semesters before it gets funding.
         | 
         | Look at the amount of contributors here. This project was
         | probably some strategic investment. It did not come to
         | existence overnight.
        
       | herbst wrote:
       | Did anyone ask for yet another a Microsoft editor on your Linux
       | machine?
        
       | gadders wrote:
       | Do Edlin next.
       | 
       | Reminds me of my days on a support line.
       | 
       | "Type edit autoexec.bat....." etc
        
         | trinix912 wrote:
         | And DEBUG. It's sad we no longer have a
         | debugger/(dis)assembler/binary editor bundled with Windows.
         | That thing was tiny but you could do so much with it.
        
       | red_admiral wrote:
       | Now I'm waiting for EDLIN but with unicode.
       | 
       | I remember you could use it in a batch file to script some kinds
       | of editing by piping the keypresses in from stdin. Sort of a
       | replacement for a subset of sed or awk.
       | 
       | I haven't tried but this should be possible with vi too. Whether
       | that is deeply cursed is another question.
        
         | gnubison wrote:
         | I think ed is what you're looking for (possibly with -s).
        
           | JdeBP wrote:
           | Ironically, given the mention of vi, it is ex that is what
           | red_admiral is looking for. (-:
        
       | napolux wrote:
       | oh, the memories. gorilla.bas :)
        
         | boobsbr wrote:
         | also, nibbles.bas
        
         | homebrewer wrote:
         | It can still be played in a browser:
         | https://archive.org/details/GorillasQbasic
        
       | wasimanitoba wrote:
       | Meanwhile, they forced AI Copilot bloat into Notepad, whose
       | singular use-case was supposed to be that it does _one_ thing
       | well without unnecessary features.
        
         | saturn5k wrote:
         | I stopped using Notepad since they introduced tabs.
        
         | dwattttt wrote:
         | I recall reading Raymond Chen mentioning that Notepad actually
         | gets more exercise than you'd expect; it's a common guinea pig
         | for features:
         | https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20180521-00/?p=98...
        
         | pjmlp wrote:
         | Unfortunately, the new Edit isn't safe from such decisions.
         | 
         | While Satya might have made the change Microsoft <3 FOSS, the
         | Gates/Balmer era was much better towards Windows developers.
         | 
         | Now we have a schizophrenia of Web and Desktop frameworks, and
         | themselves hardly use them, what used to be a comfortable VS
         | wizard, or plugin, now is e.g. a CLI tool that dumps an Excel
         | file, showing that newer blood has hardly any Windows
         | development culture, or their upper management.
        
           | CineSnaccs wrote:
           | I don't know how many people don't know this, but now you
           | actually can't release app on Windows without it showing your
           | warning while installing unless you sign it with EV
           | certificates, which cost upwards of 500$ for a year.
           | 
           | As you may have guessed, this simply pushes out smaller devs.
           | This used to NOT be like this. It should NOT be like this.
        
             | wronex wrote:
             | I would highly recommend looking into Azure code signing.
             | It is confusing to set up. But comes with instant
             | reputation and "only" costs 10$ a month.
             | 
             | EV certificates has always felt like an utter scam and
             | extortion to me. At least now there is an alternative.
        
             | simplyinfinity wrote:
             | Good. This might suck for opensource devs, but for normies
             | that might get a random exe link this is good. I've gotten
             | numerous phone calls from relatives when they try to run
             | some unrecognized app, most of the time is benign, but on
             | few occasions it was something malicious.
        
               | conductr wrote:
               | It's a heavy tax to protect the ignorant. I hear things
               | like this and think how I've been using a computer for
               | nearly 4 decades and it's never once happened to me.
               | Maybe those types of people need to re-evaluate their
               | technology choices (maybe iPad is more appropriate)
               | instead of taxing the entire ecosystem to protect them
               | from themselves.
        
               | simplyinfinity wrote:
               | low income countries don't have the money for iPads. My
               | parents run on a 300 Euro computer bought 5 years ago. My
               | dad is technical enough to get around a computer, but
               | he's in his 60s now. My mom can open Facebook and
               | youtube. Sometimes either of them downloads stuff, and
               | opens them. So your solution is "make millions consumers
               | spend $$ on overpriced hardware and even more closed off
               | system, so few hundred open source devs don't spend 500$
               | to verify their app (which they will have to do if they
               | want to release on the iOS platform either way)" Ain't no
               | way.
        
               | dec0dedab0de wrote:
               | A popup warning is not a heavy tax.
        
               | cwyers wrote:
               | If you count the number of ignorant people who use
               | Windows versus the people like you, you'll quickly
               | realize the tax is very cheap for the level of protection
               | it offers to the number of people it offers it to.
        
               | hulitu wrote:
               | > Good. This might suck for opensource devs, but for
               | normies that might get a random exe link this is good
               | 
               | That random exe link is signed by Microsoft.
        
             | rollcat wrote:
             | Unfortunately Apple normalised it, first with the iPhone.
             | There are upsides (theoretically - less trash apps), but
             | the review/curation process doesn't scale, and yep - the
             | small devs are effectively told to bug off.
             | 
             | 10 years ago I wanted to build a Love2D game, and release
             | it for the three major OS's. The .love files are
             | effectively ZIP archives, kinda like cartridges, but you
             | need the correct Love2D version (they broke API compat
             | every year or so). Windows and Mac used to be: "cat
             | love.exe game.zip > game.exe".
             | 
             | Linux gave me the most crap, because making a portable,
             | semi-static build was a nightmare; you couldn't rely on
             | distros because each one shipped a different version of
             | love.
             | 
             | Now Linux is actually becoming more viable, not because
             | it's making that much progress, but because the two
             | mainstream platforms are taking steps back.
        
               | prepend wrote:
               | At least signing is free for MacOS apps. And back when I
               | used it only $100/year for iPhone apps.
        
               | c-hendricks wrote:
               | ... where is signing free for macOS apps?
               | 
               | You can use an ad-hoc signature to sign, but people who
               | download the app will still have to jump through hoops to
               | run it.
        
             | throwaway290 wrote:
             | Now I get why a project I work on is signed for Apple and
             | not for Windows... 5x the price, jeez
        
           | shortrounddev2 wrote:
           | There are currently no ideal native app development
           | frameworks on Windows. WinForms is the closest thing
        
             | Timwi wrote:
             | I'm so glad to hear that from someone unprompted. I tried
             | WPF and it was a million times harder to use than WinForms,
             | and I couldn't even be bothered to try out MAUI (although I
             | accept it as an apology for WPF lol). I'm still using a
             | WinForms application every day (Git Extensions) and have
             | been able to contribute to it not least because it's the
             | good old familiar WinForms.
             | 
             | This is not to say that WinForms isn't without its
             | problems. I often wonder what it could be like if all the
             | effort of making WPF and MAUI had gone into maintaining,
             | modernizing and improving it.
        
               | shortrounddev2 wrote:
               | I think that the native GUI development APIs provided by
               | OS vendors need a kind of "headless" implementation
               | first, where you can build UI in pure code like winforms,
               | and then they should offer a framework on top of that. I,
               | personally, hate XAML. It's stricter than HTML/CSS and
               | very opinionated about how to organize your application.
               | I feel that XAML frameworks should have a common
               | Winforms-like API behind them that you can switch to any
               | time you want. But I've found that using the C# code-
               | behind APIs manually for WPF, UWP, MAUI, etc, is far more
               | verbose than Winforms was.
               | 
               | My only major problem with winforms is that it's still
               | using GDI under the hood which, despite what many people
               | believe, is actually still primarily software-rendered.
               | If they could just swap out Winforms for Direct2D under
               | the hood (or at least allow a client hint at startup to
               | say "prefer Direct2D") it would really bring new life to
               | Winforms, I think.
               | 
               | I would also like a C++ native GUI API that's more modern
               | than MFC
        
               | pjmlp wrote:
               | Unfortunately that is something Microsoft seems incapable
               | of.
               | 
               | MFC was already relatively bad versus OWL. Borland[0]
               | kept improving it with VCL and nowadays FireMonkey.
               | 
               | There there is Qt as well.
               | 
               | Microsoft instead came up with ATL, and when they finally
               | had something that could rival C++ Builder, with C++/CX,
               | a small group managed to replace it with C++/WinRT
               | because they didn't like extensions, the irony.
               | 
               | With complete lack of respect for paying customers, as
               | C++/WinRT never ever had the same Visual Studio tooling
               | experience as C++/CX.
               | 
               | Nowadays it is in maintenance, stuck in C++17, working
               | just good enough for WinUI 3.0 and WinAppSDK
               | implementation work, and the riot group is having fun
               | with Rust's Windows bindings.
               | 
               | So don't expect anything good coming from Microsoft in
               | regards to modern C++ GUI frameworks.
               | 
               | [0] - Yes nowadays others are at the steering wheel.
        
               | trinix912 wrote:
               | Borland was pretty good on the GUI front, I think we're
               | forgetting how easy it was to get something rolling in
               | Delphi. It's baffling Microsoft still hasn't gotten their
               | stuff together on this. They've been just releasing new
               | frameworks since the WinRT era and hoping something
               | sticks.
        
               | WorldMaker wrote:
               | "C# Markup" [1] [2] sounds a lot like what you are
               | looking for. As the only "second party" option in this
               | space it's interesting that it is so MAUI only/MAUI
               | focused, but I suppose that's the "new hotness".
               | 
               | There have been similar F# libraries and third-party C#
               | libraries for a while that seem nice to work with in
               | similar ways.
               | 
               | [1] https://learn.microsoft.com/en-
               | us/windows/apps/windows-dotne...
               | 
               | [2] https://github.com/CommunityToolkit/Maui.Markup
        
             | pjmlp wrote:
             | Agreed it is the easiest, however it is also possible to
             | use WPF on the same style as Forms, with more features, no
             | need to go crazy with MVVM, stay with plain code behind.
             | 
             | Having said this, from 3rd parties, Avalonia is probably
             | the best option.
             | 
             | While I think Uno is great as well, they lose a bit by
             | betting on WinUI as foundation on Windows, and that has
             | been only disappointment after disappointment since Project
             | Reunion.
        
             | LordDragonfang wrote:
             | We spent the better part of a calendar year researching
             | what framework to update our MFC app to. We really liked
             | the idea of staying first-party since our UI is explicitly
             | Windows-only, and we looked at every framework - MAUI,
             | winforms or WPF with a C# layer, WinUI3...
             | 
             | It quickly became apparent that WinUI3 was the only one
             | even close to viable for our use case, and we tried getting
             | a basic prototype running with out legacy backend code. We
             | kept running into dealbreakers we hoped would be addressed
             | in the alleged future releases, like the lack of tables, or
             | the baffling lack of a GUI UI designer (like every other
             | previous Win framework).
             | 
             | ...We're currently writing our GUI in Qt.
        
           | naikrovek wrote:
           | The new Edit.exe is indeed safe from those things.
           | 
           | A requirement for the tool is that it must remain as small as
           | possible, so that it can be included in the smallest
           | distributions of Windows, like Nano Server. It is the rescue
           | text editor there.
           | 
           | I'm sure plugins are going to do all the things that everyone
           | doesn't want (or does want) but the default edit.exe will
           | remain small, I'd bet money on it.
        
         | GardenLetter27 wrote:
         | It sucks so much - my ISP had an intermittent outage (some IPv4
         | / MTU issues), and I couldn't save files in Notepad without
         | disabling it.
         | 
         | I was literally trying to configure Wireguard to get around the
         | ISP issues.
        
         | masfoobar wrote:
         | Thank you for this!
         | 
         | I had to open Notepad and see it for myself. Wow! I see the
         | Icon.
         | 
         | I remember Co-pilot just suddenly appearing in my taskbar and
         | finding it annoying. Despite removing it, I still see it
         | lurking around... and now I see it is a SIMPLE TEXT EDITING
         | PROGRAM named Notepad.
         | 
         | Wow.
        
         | OptionOfT wrote:
         | And if you uninstall the modern notepad, start's search doesn't
         | find the old one.
        
           | MaxikCZ wrote:
           | As if start's search ever found anything...
        
         | bgro wrote:
         | Every product has bizarre bloat. I understand things might get
         | heavier over time with new features, but Office from like 20
         | years ago still works pretty great. In fact, I don't even
         | really see any new features that are missing in my normal use
         | case. Actually, anything that DOES exist in a newer version is
         | something I actively DO NOT want. For example, monthly/yearly
         | subscriptions, popups that interrupt typing to advertise some
         | new bloat, and dedicated buttons to import any file into a
         | powerpoint presentation or email.
         | 
         | Look at Outlook. Literally less than 25% of the screen appears
         | to be dedicated to email content. I say literally because I
         | physically measured it and from what I remember it was 18% to
         | 20%. Microsoft keeps adding these gigantic toolbars that each
         | have duplicate buttons that often can't really be adjusted,
         | removed, or hidden. Or it may be an all-or-nothing scenario
         | where something can be removed but then you can't e.g. send
         | emails.
         | 
         | Rather than fixing the problem, the solution is to add a new
         | toolbar. This frequently keeps happening. Just one more toolbar
         | with a select subset of buttons in one place so people can find
         | it. Well now... We have some extra whitespace... Let's throw in
         | the weather there and why not put the news in too. What could
         | possibly go wrong?
         | 
         | And then loading the news, some totally unrelated and non-
         | critical feature they shove in forcefully by default frequently
         | has at least one critical severe bug where there's an async
         | fetch process that spikes the cpu to max and crashes the whole
         | system. There's no way to disable news without first loading
         | outlook and going into advanced settings, which of course is
         | past the critical point of the news being loaded.
         | 
         | Go look at like Outlook 2003. It is nearly perfect. It's clean,
         | simple, and there's no distractions. This is so amazing, like
         | many Microsoft products that seem to be built by engineers, but
         | I don't know how we get to modern outlook that feels like it
         | has 10 to 50 separate project manager teams bloating it up
         | often with duplicate functionality.
         | 
         | This would be bad enough, but then again instead of fixing it
         | like I said before or fixing it by reducing or consolidating
         | teams or product work, we get ANOTHER layer of Microsoft bloat
         | by having multiple versions of the same product. So we have
         | Outlook (legacy) named that way to make you feel bad for using
         | an old version, or named to scare you into believing it won't
         | be supported. Then there's Outlook (New). Then there's Outlook
         | (Classic) which isn't legacy or new but is a weird mix of
         | things. Then there's a web version that they try to force
         | everybody into because it's literally perfect and there's no
         | reason not to use it... Somehow they didn't catch that emails
         | don't load in folders unless you click into them, or sorting
         | rules don't work the same or don't support all the same
         | conditions. Rather than fixing it, you get attacked for using
         | edge case frivilous advanced obscure functionality. Like who
         | would want to have emails pre-sorted into any folder except
         | inbox? Shame on you for using email wrong I guess.
         | 
         | I'll skip over the part where there's multiple versions of the
         | multiple forks of outlook. But there's also Government,
         | Education, Student, Trial, Free, Standard, Pro, Business,
         | Business pro, Business premium, etc.
         | 
         | The last infuriating point in my rant has to come down to their
         | naming standards. For some reason they keep renaming something
         | old to a completely new name and of all the names they could
         | pick, it's not only something that already exists but it's
         | another Microsoft product. This is a nightmare trying to
         | explain to somebody who is only familiar or aware of either the
         | old or the new name and this confusion is often mixed even on a
         | technically capable and competent team. For bonus points, the
         | name has to be something generic. Even like "Windows" which is
         | not a great example because the operating system is so popular
         | but you can imagine similarly named things causing search
         | confusion. Or even imagine trying to search for the GUI box
         | thing that displays files in a folder within the operating
         | system, also called a window, and try to imagine debugging an
         | obscure technical problem about that while getting relevant
         | information.
         | 
         | There's so many Microsoft moments that things like adding AI to
         | notepad hardly phase me anymore. I don't like that they do that
         | but I wouldn't necessarily be so offended if their own
         | description they came up with in the first place was what you
         | mentioned. Constantly going against their own information they
         | invented themselves and chose to state as a core statement just
         | irritates me.
        
           | samiv wrote:
           | Since you mentioned Outlook.. at work we use Outlook 2019 and
           | its exactly like you mention.
           | 
           | The user interface is littered with useless crap, the File
           | menu goes back to this weird completely new different UI
           | layout etc etc.
           | 
           | And the best part is that if the VPN goes temporarily down it
           | fails to send/receive new emails until it has been restarted.
           | 
           | Let me say that again.
           | 
           | It fails at its _core_ functionality if there 's a glitch in
           | the network and cannot send or receive emails. That's just a
           | next level of incompetence.
        
           | navane wrote:
           | I just googled some screenshots of outlook 2003 and I felt
           | peace.
        
           | EvanAnderson wrote:
           | > The last infuriating point in my rant has to come down to
           | their naming standards. For some reason they keep renaming
           | something old to a completely new name and of all the names
           | they could pick, it's not only something that already exists
           | but it's another Microsoft product.
           | 
           | Microsoft has seemingly sucked at naming things since at
           | least the mid-90s. It's effectively un-search-engine-able,
           | but I recall that in the anti-trust action in the mid-90s a
           | Microsoft person was trying to answer questions about
           | "Internet Explorer" versus "Explorer" (as-in "Windows
           | Explorer", as in the shell UI) and it was a confusing jumble.
           | Their answers kept coming back to calling things "an
           | explorer". It made very little sense. Years later, and after
           | much exposure to Microsoft products, it occurred to me that
           | "explorer" was an early 90s Microsoft-ism for "thing that
           | lets you browse thru collections of stuff" (much like
           | "wizards" being step-by-step guided processes to operate a
           | program).
           | 
           | Also, playing-back my "greatest hits" comment re: Microsoft
           | product naming: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40419292
        
         | 0cf8612b2e1e wrote:
         | I took a screenshot and pasted it into the new Win11 Paint.
         | Even minimized, Paint was constantly using 5% CPU and sitting
         | at ~250MB of RAM. I guess I can begrudgingly get over the RAM,
         | but squandering the CPU like that is ridiculous.
         | 
         | What happened to pride or quality control or anything?
        
           | hulitu wrote:
           | > What happened to pride or quality control or anything?
           | 
           | We are talking about Microsoft here.
        
           | dogleash wrote:
           | >What happened to pride or quality control or anything?
           | 
           | Sounds like some dangerous cowboy coding wrongthink you've
           | got going on over there.
        
           | jandrese wrote:
           | I assume it is basically an Electron app now. Anything will
           | be bloated when it's a full web browser running some webapp.
        
             | contextfree wrote:
             | No, it doesn't use Electron or webviews afaik. The UI is
             | mostly WinUI2/UWP/XAML Islands based however
        
       | guerrilla wrote:
       | Maybe this makes up for them destroying Notepad for some people.
        
       | nhinck3 wrote:
       | Another Microsoft nerd-washing project.
        
         | imbnwa wrote:
         | 'nerd-washing' such a great term
        
       | masfoobar wrote:
       | About a month ago I heard Microsoft had their own Linux
       | distribution to help Microsoft Windows users feel more at home.
       | From memory, it was a rather simple GNOME setup. Nothing special.
       | 
       | I am surprised Micrsooft didnt use the opportunity to create a
       | micrsoft specific Linux distro that replaces bash with
       | powershell, or Edit with vim, nano and other choices as well as
       | .NET and Visual Studio Code by developer installs.
       | 
       | Micrsoft could have used this as their default WSL install.
       | 
       | It may not have won the war against typical distro like Ubuntu or
       | Debian but it could have gained a percentage and be a common
       | choice for Windows users - and there are a lot of Windows users!
       | 
       | Microsoft cannot dominate the Linux kernel but it can gain
       | control in userland. Imagine if they gained traction with their
       | applications being installed by default in popular distributions.
       | 
       | This Microsoft Edit is available for Linux, like Powershell is
       | and others. If they had played their cards right -- perhaps -- 10
       | years ago, their distribution could have been in the top 5 today,
       | all because many windows users use it as their WSL.
       | 
       | Giant companies (like M$) can inject their fingerprints into my
       | personal space. Now, we just need Micrsooft Edit to have Co-Pilot
       | on by default...
        
         | repler wrote:
         | > I am surprised Micrsooft didnt use the opportunity to create
         | a micrsoft specific Linux distro
         | 
         | The last one didn't do so hot, they named it "Xenix"
        
           | arexxbifs wrote:
           | It was a lousy distro, it didn't even include the Linux
           | kernel!
           | 
           | On the other hand, according to AT&T, Xenix accounted for
           | about half of the worldwide Unix licenses in the late 1980s.
        
           | bdcravens wrote:
           | That wasn't Linux. Unix != Linux.
        
         | subjectsigma wrote:
         | I would venture a guess that the name recognition helps them.
         | No developer wants to install a distro they've never heard of,
         | but they do want to install Ubuntu. If WSL supports Ubuntu then
         | they can cash in on that.
        
         | delfinom wrote:
         | >Microsoft cannot dominate the Linux kernel but it can gain
         | control in userland. Imagine if they gained traction with their
         | applications being installed by default in popular
         | distributions.
         | 
         | Yes, but how do they make money by doing this.
         | 
         | Unlike the socialist hiveminds that end up being behind the
         | distros. Microsoft has salaries and bills to pay.
         | 
         | As far as I've always seen, everyone loves to leech on
         | Microsoft's free stuff but nobody wants to pay for a product.
        
           | masfoobar wrote:
           | I do not claim to be a business expert but I dont think their
           | success comes from just their Windows Operating System. Well,
           | I would say the success for Windows is not about the profit
           | but the control of users. If the majority are on Windows,
           | they are unlikly to change habit to what they are familar
           | with.
           | 
           | Besdies, for new PC/Laptops come bundled with Windows,
           | Microsoft has made an agreement made with various retailers
           | to come with Windows (Home edition) preinstalled. So in some
           | ways, Windows is free for the User unless they pay for
           | Professional edition, or whatever is offered today.
           | 
           | Of course, the average user will create a microsoft account
           | to complete the install. :-)
           | 
           | Besides the Windows OS -- it is really the Services they
           | provide.. Azure, Office365, SQL Server, PowerBI, etc. I would
           | say THIS is where a lot of the money comes from... business
           | willing to pay for them!
           | 
           | I work for Companies that are willing to PAY for these things
           | - all for "Support"
           | 
           | If something goes wrong.. raise it with Microsoft. Even if I
           | know what the problem is, it is all about the ticketing
           | system. Throw it to Microsoft and carry on.
           | 
           | Despite the above, Microsoft also have "Free" software. They
           | have started to Open Source many of their software.. allowing
           | Linux support as well as Windows. Visual Studio Code, SQL
           | Server, Powershell, etc.
           | 
           | It comes back to my point. When they presented WSL - they
           | could have provided a "MS Linux" Distro, all promoted as
           | "ease for Windows users" and if it became a popular distro,
           | would have pushed micrsoft to have more control in
           | userland... which would have alienated most Windows users
           | away from Ubuntu, etc.
           | 
           | Like Windows, it is a method to keeping your userbase to rely
           | on what they know overall.
        
         | martinald wrote:
         | I strongly suspect in time Microsoft will move to Linux, at
         | least with things like Windows Server and embedded Windows.
         | Then a gradual change for Windows desktop, or a sort of Windows
         | Legacy vs Windows "Linux Workstation" desktop options. Linux
         | kernel + some sort of 'super' WINE and a fallback tightly
         | integrated Windows classic on a VM for certain programs.
         | 
         | Only problem is that the NT kernel in many ways is much better
         | than the Linux kernel design wise (for example, the NT kernel
         | can handle a total GPU driver crash and restore itself, which I
         | think Linux would really struggle with - same with a lot of
         | other drivers).
         | 
         | But Windows is increasingly a liability not an asset for
         | Microsoft, especially in the server space. Their main revenue
         | stream is Azure & Office 365 which is growing at double digits
         | still, with Windows license growth flat.
         | 
         | At a minimum I'd expect a Linux based version of Windows Server
         | and some sort of Workstation version of Windows, based on
         | Linux.
        
           | naikrovek wrote:
           | > I strongly suspect in time Microsoft will move to Linux, at
           | least with things like Windows Server and embedded Windows.
           | 
           | You may not understand how important Microsoft considers
           | backwards compatibility. Switching to a Linux kernel would
           | eliminate all of that, and that is simply not an option for
           | Microsoft.
           | 
           | The Linux kernel is missing a lot of esoteric things that the
           | NT kernel has and that people use a lot, as well.
           | 
           | Windows as we use the word today (any variant) will not ever
           | switch to a Linux kernel.
           | 
           | I do hope one day that Microsoft put a proper GUI on Linux
           | though, no X, no Wayland, but something smarter and better
           | than those. Probably also not likely to happen but I'd love
           | to see it if they could do it well.
        
             | trelane wrote:
             | > I do hope one day that Microsoft put a proper GUI on
             | Linux though, no X, no Wayland, but something smarter and
             | better than those.
             | 
             | https://xkcd.com/927/
             | 
             | Now that I say that, though, that _does_ sound like a
             | Microsoft kind of move. They do love other platforms  "to
             | death."
        
         | LionEgo wrote:
         | The reason why WSL is a thing is because developers in corps
         | needed a way to run Linux. IT support and techs doesn't know
         | anything about Linux typically and don't want to deal with
         | supporting it. WSL fixes this problem.
         | 
         | Most developers don't want to use Linux at all. Many developers
         | don't even really know how to user a terminal and rely on GUI
         | tools.
        
           | 8-prime wrote:
           | > Most developers don't want to use Linux at all. I don't
           | know if this is necessarily true. Many of the develops I know
           | prefer GUI applications to cli tooling, which I can get
           | behind. That has nothing to do with Linux vs Windows though.
           | But my struggles with Windows are plentiful and the same goes
           | for all my colleagues. I have a hard time believing that we
           | are the outliers and not the rule.
        
             | philistine wrote:
             | > Most developers don't want to use Linux at all.
             | 
             | (looks at the install numbers for Linux vs Windows in the
             | server space) I'm not so sure.
        
           | lpcvoid wrote:
           | Sorry for the snarky comment, but then those devs are simply
           | bad. Windows is legacy, the future is in open source.
        
           | masfoobar wrote:
           | > Most developers don't want to use Linux at all. Many
           | developers don't even really know how to user a terminal and
           | rely on GUI tools.
           | 
           | First of all, I disagree with this comment.
           | 
           | However, lets assume you are right.. that the average
           | "Windows Developer" has little to zero skills in GNU/Linux.
           | 
           | If that is the case, it proves my point EVEN MORE that
           | Micrsofot missed out creating a Microsoft Linux Distro...
           | designed to have Powershell, Visual Studio Code, Edit, and
           | potentially Edge, SQL Server, etc.
           | 
           | It would still be Linux but keeping to what they know in
           | Windows -- and would have given Microsoft more power in the
           | linux world.
        
             | LionEgo wrote:
             | > First of all, I disagree with this comment.
             | 
             | You can disagree all you want. It is simply the truth. I've
             | contracted in the UK and Europe. Most devs don't even know
             | you can tab complete most commands in modern shells (IIRC
             | cmd.exe supports this). This is both Microsoft Shops and
             | shops that use opensource stacks e.g. LAMP and similar.
             | 
             | I was in a large company in the NW and I knew two
             | developers in a team of 30 that knew _basic_ bash and vim.
             | 
             | > If that is the case, it proves my point EVEN MORE that
             | Micrsofot missed out creating a Microsoft Linux Distro...
             | designed to have Powershell, Visual Studio Code, Edit, and
             | potentially Edge, SQL Server, etc.
             | 
             | Respectfully you seem to have never worked with the people
             | I describe. You listed PowerShell as if they would use it.
             | A former colleague of mine was quizzed why he would use
             | PowerShell to write a script that would run on a Windows
             | Server. They had expected him to write a C# program.
        
           | trelane wrote:
           | > Many developers don't even really know how to user a
           | terminal and rely on GUI tools.
           | 
           | Fortunately, Linux users can also avail themselves of a
           | graphical interface as well.
        
             | LionEgo wrote:
             | Your snark at my comments is completely unwarranted.
             | 
             | Installing any dev tooling that is third party is done on
             | the command line. Go and look up the instructions for
             | installing Node LTS on Debian, or .NET, or Golang. You need
             | to use the command line.
             | 
             | I won't get into the state of Linux user interfaces. While
             | some of them can look pretty basic features still work
             | inconsistently and I've been using Linux for 25 years.
             | 
             | So it is easier to learn bash, learn to read the man pages,
             | because that is a consistent interface for the system.
        
         | dfedbeef wrote:
         | You think Microsoft maintains an entire secret distro just for
         | Windows people to feel 'at home'.
        
           | masfoobar wrote:
           | > You think Microsoft maintains an entire secret distro just
           | for Windows people to feel 'at home'.
           | 
           | Sorry I dont understand the point you are making.
           | 
           | I did not suggest they had a "secret distro" I am suggesting
           | they could have claimed a share of dominance in the Linux
           | Distro as the default WSL distro.
        
         | Arnavion wrote:
         | >About a month ago I heard Microsoft had their own Linux
         | distribution to help Microsoft Windows users feel more at home.
         | From memory, it was a rather simple GNOME setup. Nothing
         | special.
         | 
         | You're confusing Microsoft's first-party Linux distro Azure
         | Linux (nee CBL-Mariner) that is intended as a regular MS-
         | supported OS for containers, VMs, servers, etc, with various
         | Windows-like skins for Linux DEs that people have made for
         | years.
        
       | Fokamul wrote:
       | Nano is completely ok for this. Nope, let's burn some cash and
       | reinvent the wheel.
       | 
       | Instead of donating to Nano devs, or hire some of them or
       | something.
       | 
       | Stupid corp at their finest.
        
         | masfuerte wrote:
         | Nano is a bare-bones editor with its own wacky key-bindings.
         | What is the point? If I want to learn new key-bindings I'll
         | learn a full-featured editor.
         | 
         | msedit's key-bindings are based on IBM CUA. It's immediately
         | familiar to a great many people.
        
           | mixmastamyk wrote:
           | Nano can be configured with CUA keybindings, I do it.
           | 
           | But I'm glad someone wrote one of these in rust.
        
       | cyberwaj wrote:
       | story in the news already
       | https://digitrendz.blog/newswire/technology/19460/microsoft-...
        
       | amelius wrote:
       | Was hoping for MS-DOS editor with built-in LLM.
        
       | scoopr wrote:
       | The original edit.com, from around dos 6.22 (and later 7.0, ie.
       | win95) was my first IDE. Well, I started with qbasic, so I was
       | fairly familiar with it as it was similar (or same?), but when I
       | started learning C/C++ with djgpp, I just continued using
       | edit.com.
       | 
       | My "project file" was `e.bat` with `edit file1.cpp file2.cpp
       | file3.cpp`, as it was one of the few editors that I knew that had
       | a decent multi file support with easy switching (alt-1,2,3 ..). I
       | still continue remapping editor keybindings to switch to files
       | with alt/cmd-1,2,3,.. and try to have my "active set" as few of
       | the first files in the editor
       | 
       | It wasn't a great code editor, as it didn't have syntax
       | highlighting, and the indent behaviour wasn't super great (which
       | is why in my early career had my indent was two spaces, as that
       | was easy enough to do by hand, and wasn't too much like tab). But
       | I felt very immediate with the code anyway.
       | 
       | I knew that many others used editors like `qedit`, but somehow
       | they never clicked with me. The unixy editors didn't feel right
       | in dos either.
       | 
       | Quickly trying this, it doesn't seem to switch buffers with the
       | same keybindings, even if it does seem to support multiple
       | buffers.
        
         | unsupp0rted wrote:
         | edit was a godsend after the `copy con` days
        
           | naikrovek wrote:
           | I remember using edlin a lot in my early computing days. It
           | was murder to learn but once you knew how to wield it, it was
           | excellent. I don't know why I was forced to learn that but I
           | needed it for something and stuck to it the entire time I
           | used DOS for anything. And people were in awe when you used
           | it while they watched. "What the hell was that!?"
        
         | mysterydip wrote:
         | It may not have had syntax highlighting, but it did have syntax
         | capitalization (for lack of a better term?). If you typed a
         | line in all lowercase, after hitting enter it would
         | automatically uppercase the reserved words. It wasn't much, but
         | it helped
        
         | JdeBP wrote:
         | You should raise that as an issue. If things like that get in
         | early enough, they get heard.
         | 
         | And it wasn't just similar. It was literally the same. EDIT.COM
         | simply started QBASIC up with a special flag. One could just
         | run QBASIC with the flag. As I said at
         | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44037509 , I actually did,
         | just for kicks.
        
       | ubermonkey wrote:
       | I do not understand the love this project is getting. It was a
       | shit editor when it was introduced; we'd all started using
       | something else years before.
        
         | riffic wrote:
         | agreed. it's nostalgic sure but it's not a good editor.
        
       | kspacewalk2 wrote:
       | How long until it becomes Copilot 365 Edit?
        
       | csense wrote:
       | Fun project #1: Get the binary size comparable to EDIT.COM
       | 
       | Fun project #2: Port to MS-DOS (with DPMI)
       | 
       | Fun project #3: Port to 16-bit MS-DOS (runs on original 8086)
        
       | Aldipower wrote:
       | I appreciate the sense of humor coming from this project. F.ex.
       | from the release note: "As Steve Ballmer famously said: Fixes!
       | Fixes! Fixes!".
       | 
       | Refreshing to see employees can have fun in a multi billion
       | dollar company.
        
       | pmarreck wrote:
       | I love TUI's lately.
       | 
       | I just wish this was on nixpkgs
        
       | nhatcher wrote:
       | So many things I like about this!
       | 
       | First of all, an empty list of dependencies! I am sold! It works
       | great. I can't believe the did a whole TUI just for this, with a
       | dialogs a file browser. I want to use for a project of mine, I
       | wonder how easy it is. If someone involve in the project is here,
       | why not use Ratatui?
       | 
       | Code quality is top notch, can only say one thing:
       | 
       | Bravo!
        
       | ashoeafoot wrote:
       | If you are a idea guy and want your idea real , all you have to
       | make is a fency fake trailer anouncing it, then watch the company
       | create it, the suits are this empty anyone external can
       | powersteer those ghostships.
        
       | 0x0 wrote:
       | I was hoping this would work over ssh in a macOS Terminal.app,
       | but last I tried it was inserting all kinds of weird characters
       | into the edited text files.
       | 
       | Windows ships an official OpenSSH server these days, but so far
       | there haven't been any good official text editors that work over
       | OpenSSH, as far as I know.
       | 
       | I've had to resort to "copy con output.txt" the few times I
       | needed to put things into a text file over windows-opensshd...
        
         | mixmastamyk wrote:
         | Maybe using ucs2 encoding, instead of utf8?
        
       | dbuxton wrote:
       | I came here assuming that this was a clone of Gemini CLI (which
       | is a clone of Claude Code). Both pleased and disappointed to be
       | wrong.
        
       | majkinetor wrote:
       | I thought this might work with Enter-PSSession but it
       | unfortunatelly produced Error 0x80070006: The handle is invalid.
       | 
       | Insane that we don't have TUI in remote session in 2025.
        
         | DSMan195276 wrote:
         | Agree 100%, that's the biggest difference I feel whenever I'm
         | doing remote Powershell vs. ssh, it always feels like a
         | struggle just to make basic file modifications.
        
       | bluedino wrote:
       | > This editor pays homage to the classic MS-DOS Editor
       | 
       | Oddly, it looks more like Borland's editor.
        
         | kevin_thibedeau wrote:
         | TurboVision had horizontal scrollbars. Edit never did.
        
       | DrNosferatu wrote:
       | Any Flatpak or Snap editions?
        
       | tmaly wrote:
       | Was this made just cause someone wanted to do something in Rust?
        
         | JdeBP wrote:
         | No. The developer actually chose Zig initially.
         | 
         | * https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44034961
        
       | oliverkwebb wrote:
       | It's nice to see an editor that explicitly isn't an IDE and is
       | more something like notepad. often when editing config files and
       | the such, it's more convenient to use something like notepad than
       | it is to use something like VSCode.
       | 
       | This editor doesn't have delusions of grandeur, it focuses on
       | usability more than features. and it is better for it.
        
       | parliament32 wrote:
       | The lengths people will go just to not have to learn Vim
       | continues to surprise me.
        
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       (page generated 2025-06-25 23:01 UTC)