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From: Rob Pike <robpike@gmail.com>
Date: Wed, 8 Jul 2020 08:47:38 +1000
To: Norman Wilson <norman@oclsc.org>
Subject: Re: [TUHS] v7 uucp debugging help requested
Cc: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society <tuhs@tuhs.org>
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The thing about ed that is missed by johnny-come-latelys who mock it for
its lowness is that it was so much higher than most, if not all the
commercially available text editors of its time. The gold standard was
perhaps Son of Stopgap, whose very name tells you the state of things.

I remember spending a couple of days baking inside a radio telescope
control cabin implementing a miniature version of ed in forth just so I
work more effectively on the task to come.

-rob


On Wed, Jul 8, 2020 at 5:22 AM Norman Wilson <norman@oclsc.org> wrote:

> Dave Horsfall:
>
>   A boss of mine insisted that we all learned "ed", because one day it
> might
>   be the only editor available to you after a crash; he was right...
>
> ====
>
> Besides which, as The Blessed Manual said in every
> Research edition:
>         ed is the standard text editor.
>
> Norman Wilson
> Toronto ON
> (typing this in Toronto qed)
>