Firefly the Great

I’m glad I’m not the only person who read this excellent excerpt from Christopher Buckley’s upcoming Losing Mum and Pup to take from it the profound and moving thought of “Hey! WordStar!” John Derbyshire did as well:

One little detail that caught my eye was Bill’s insistence on sticking with WordStar as his word processor of choice. I understand this perfectly. Once you’ve mastered a piece of software, why should you have to go to the trouble of ditching it to learn a new one? Bill actually out-conservatived me there. I am proud to tell anyone who asks that I write everything (including this diary) using KEDIT, a nifty text editor from the mid-1980s. KEDIT is modeled on XEDIT, which I used in my mainframe days in the early 1980s. I’m well into my third decade with KEDIT and see no reason to change. Still, KEDIT’s first release was 1983; WordStar was already five years old at that point.

I believe I have used WordStar, inasmuch as someone opened it for me and I went “Hey! I can type my name! ooooooh green letters”

… ok, I was four years old.

I have, however, been formally introduced to vi as of last semester, and while I can’t say I’m ready to participate in any holy wars yet, I can see why other people might feel compelled to stand by their text editor with great enthusiasm.

Posted by firefly under Computers & Current Events |