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It's an interesting thing. Who really uses a text editor? I use VS2005 for writing code, Word for writing documentation, FrontPage for writing articles (yes, I'm archaic), and whatever you want to call that online GMail editor for writing emails. OK, I occasionally write notes to myself using Notepad, but I'm trying to break the habit, and use Google's note applets, which is really useful because notes tend to be something I want to have access to on any computer, anywhere.
Marc
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I'm with you. I sometimes copy text from an HTML page into Notepad for pasting into another document without the formatting, but other than that it's VS2005 IDE and Word.
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I tend to keep away from google anything, these days. They seem to be interested in gathering my life into their database.
It bothers me to even send mail to gmail.
For whatever reason, even before they set their sights on DoubleClick, I've lost faith in google.
"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein
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Balboos wrote: I've lost faith in google.
Well, I was never under the delusion that google was anything but interested in gathering my life into their database.
I practice the simplest security policy possible: open information. OK, sure, I won't give you my SSN, credit card #'s or server passwords, so there is a limit, but otherwise, I try to keep things simple. Otherwise it gets very confusing and complicated.
Marc
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Yeah the first time I ever typed a search into an internet box, I thought "somebody is collecting this information and if they're not, they're stupid to ignore it" - knowing what people actually want is a super power. And yeah, nothing you might think is private is actually private. SSNs can be gotten a bunch of ways, just think of how many organizations have your SSN - it is a meaningless number. Your bank account numbers, address, income information, criminal history, all that stuff is (essentially) public records.
The problem is that banks and other financial institutions accept this public information as proof of identity.
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Perhaps I follow a version of your "open information" plan, too?
It's done a bit differently: I create new information at every turn. I'm a male/female teenage/senior citizen with/without children who's married, single, and divorced. No better place to hide a forest than amongst trees. Or is it the other way around.
Some stuff sneaks out - such as when an on-line purchase is made.
The information sucking that I fear the most: what an astounding profile is produced from your credit-card puchases! And, if you're in a place with scanning tollbooths ("EZPass" in NY, for example), you even leave a fingerprint of where you've been, and when.
As my life begins to recurse upon itself, I realize that I am part of the problem. Apps that with SQL queries collecting, correlating, and spewing out data aggregates.
What have I done? What have I become? Does anybody even care?
Text Editors? Only the tip of the iceberg!
"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein
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Marc Clifton wrote: Who really uses a text editor?
I do, a lot. Most of the new development here is done on Linux, and after evaluating several of the most popular IDEs (KDevelop, Eclipse, MingW Studio,...) I decided to use vim for writing code (any code - C++, HTML/CSS, JavaScript,...). Now I have hard times editing code with Visual Studio, although nothing in the Linux world comes close to its integrated debugger.
Even under Windows, I need a good text editor - my job is mostly about text/language processing, so I need to edit/view a lot of text samples with different encodings and in various languages.
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Huh. I use text editors all the time. I have three open right now! And that's on top of the twenty or so files open across four instances of VS.
One contains some throw-away queries i'm working on. Another is a configuration file i'd tweaked. And the last are some stylesheets for a website i was playing with. When i'm on the phone and need to take notes, i pop open another text editor and start typing.
Sure, i could use VS for all these things. But VS doesn't open immediately, and Ctrl+N doesn't immediately open a new text file, and if i was gonna associate VS with all my .config, .ini, .log, .inf, etc. files, i'd have to always be worried about launching too many instances, or the wrong version or whatever. The app's just not built for that kind of use.
The little text editor is my digital equivalent to the pile of old printouts that sits next to my keyboard for doodling on, taking notes, keeping lists, etc. 
----
...the wind blows over it and it is gone, and its place remembers it no more...
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Marc Clifton wrote: I use VS2005 for writing code
Real coders actually type code though, so with VS you are still using a text editor. I hope that's what you mean. Visual Studio is essentially a bloated text editor, and I didn't vote in this because it was not listed. I actually like it for many things, especially XML, and I hardly ever use anything else any more. It seems like overkill, but I always have at least one instance of VS open anyway, so it's not hurting anything when I open a new doc in it.
The only thing I currently don't like about the VS text editor is that it copies the formatting and since I use a black background and huge font, when I copy/paste code to send to people, I have to make an extra step to remove the formatting.
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> Real coders actually type code though, so with VS you are
> still using a text editor. I hope that's what you mean.
> Visual Studio is essentially a bloated text editor, and I
> didn't vote in this because it was not listed.
I suspect there's some feeling among some programmers that coding in notepad is more 'hardcore' or something. I used to feel a bit like this. But then, coding in assembly is more hardcore, and then, coding in machine code opcodes with switches and valves on your massive old mainframe is even more hardcore.
When I had to use Eclipse for Java programming in work last year, at first I thought "gak", but I soon came to truly love how much easier it made programming tasks in general.
For example, with the cursor in the condition for an if-statement, entering the "Refactoring" menu or the quick-fix menu iirc (ctrl-1) offers "Invert case", which will switch around the if and else cases and negate the condition...
Or extracting an interface from a class... renaming classes (alt-shift-r), generating getters/setters (alt-shift-s, r), and a horde of context-sensitive, intuitive refactorings available in various situations.
Then the CVS stuff integrated in is a piece of cake, too, as are the JUnit test-runners.
I couldn't see myself going back to writing Java code in a simple text editor now; it'd just be too slow and cumbersome. The only issue is the gigantic amount of memory Eclipse hogs. My poor hard disk will probably swap itself into space one day...
Nowadays I'm using C++ more, with the Ultimate++ IDE... which has its moments too.
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Which is why I think VS should be on the list of text editors. It offers a lot of that kind of stuff that you mentioned, which note pad will never have. I'm not the type to admire someone working in Notepad when they have VS available... I'm saying that if you write code, and a lot of people don't, but if you write code then you can't ignore the advantages of a good code editor like Visual Studio, Eclipse, or CodeWarrior.
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> I'm not the type to admire someone working in Notepad when
> they have VS available... I'm saying that if you write code,
> and a lot of people don't, but if you write code then you
> can't ignore the advantages of a good code editor like
> Visual Studio, Eclipse, or CodeWarrior.
Well said... the same holds true earlier in the game I think; I worked as a lab tutor part-time for three years, helping groups of students learn Java and 8086 assembly (err... separately ).
After some time, I noticed a strong correlation between using even a decent editor and batch files for example, when assembling, linking, relocating and sending files to the embedded system (the "D6 kit") we used in the assembly labs.
People who used Editplus (which was installed on all lab machines and some set students set up with syntax highlighting etc) were much more likely to pass, whereas the people still using Notepad at the end of the year were mostly doomed. The same went for Java coding.
I guess a real programmer knows when to add a good tool to his repertoire... and some people will just keep trying to dig a tunnel with a spoon.
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"Who really uses a text editor?"
Anyone who who writes HTML for web pages I would say.
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When working with script files, data files, or anything else text-based UltraEdit with it's powerful macros is hands down my favorite.
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Marc Clifton wrote: I use VS2005 for writing code
As I do quite a lot of non-Windows programming, I use a text editor all the time for editting code, makefiles, linker scripts, batch files and stuff. Textpad+CMD on Windows, TextMate+Terminal.App on OS X - that's my (not-I)DE
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Editplus in Windows - king of kings, with those programmable toolbar buttons (I had them running tasm and executables, then javac and java).
In Linux, at the moment I'm using nEdit because someone wrote an Eiffel syntax highlighting file for it. A bit twitchy but it mostly works... other than that it's vim for standard editing.
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I agree, EditPlus is a terrific editor. The built-in FTP is one of my favorite features. I can access remote files just as if they were local.
Meddle not in the affairs of dragons,
For you are crunchy, and good with mustard.
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> The built-in FTP is one of my favorite features. I can
> access remote files just as if they were local.
Good point - and even better, iirc it works transparently with SCP as well... I was using it in college to work on files I had saved on the networking club (ie: geek's club) Solaris server. Sexy time.
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tsdragon wrote: I agree, EditPlus is a terrific editor. The built-in FTP is one of my favorite features. I can access remote files just as if they were local.
Meddle not in the affairs of dragons,
For you are crunchy, and good with mustard.
Yes, I agree.
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On Mac OS X, TextMate is really good.
regards,
Paul Watson
Ireland & South Africa
Shog9 wrote: And with that, Paul closed his browser, sipped his herbal tea, fixed the flower in his hair, and smiled brightly at the multitude of cute, furry animals flocking around the grassy hillside where he sat coding Ruby on his Mac...
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+1 for TextMate
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WM.
What about weapons of mass-construction?
"What? Its an Apple MacBook Pro. They are sexy!" - Paul Watson
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Been down for days now  Think I need to move it elsewhere :p
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