note
Petruchio
Here I am, planning on complimenting you on being a
clever monk and making
[Life at the Monastery. Chapter 1|an outstanding post],
and I find that you use Pico. Talk about cognitive
dissonance!<p>
I'm afraid your friend is right, and that you are
practicing <i>False Laziness</i>. By refusing to do the
required work up front, you are damning yourself to more
work overall. If you learn Emacs, you'll be more truly
Lazy, for you'll save yourself work overall. If you learn
Vi, you'll be even Lazier, because Vi requires fewer
keystrokes for a given task. (Quoth [Petruchio], the
grinning troll)<p>
Your Impatience, too, is <i>False Impatience</i>. True
Impatience is the anger you feel when your computer
tries to make you do its work for it. Pico is one of
your computer's devious tools, with which it makes you
its willing slave. I know; I used to be a Pico user...
though from ignorance, not willfulness.<p>
Unfortunately, you've really painted yourself into a
corner, now. The Honest thing to do would be to admit
defeat... but Honesty isn't one of the virtues of a
programmer, and it can be terribly annoying. Your
alternatives are limited... you may:<p>
<UL>
<LI> *sigh* Learn Emacs
<LI> Learn Vim, and insist that that's different than
learning Vi
<LI> Make some bet which you can honorably lose, and
switch to Vi to fill your end of the bargain. I suggest
betting that your roommate can't do something really
unpleasant.
<LI> <code>cp vim pico</code> or <code>ln vim pico</code>
Another win on technicality, because you're running a
program called pico. Having to type an extra two letters
(as vi is often a link to vim or another clone) to
invoke your editor, though, remains a serious compromise.
<LI> Move out
</UL><p>
There are probably some other good options. Be creative,
but realistic; your objective is not to continue
flogging yourself with Pico, but to save face. In any
case, take solace in knowing that Vi isn't actually hard
to learn at all, and you can extend it to do cool things
using Perl.<p>
Now say 20 Hail Larrys, write a script of contrition
(using a real editor), and next time you come back it'd
better just be fornication or something.
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