TextMate vs Vi. Word vs Vim. Extreme Keyboarding.

Good review of TextMate by a Vim user, both the pros and cons of each: Good work in progress! by signata on versiontracker.com

A Hymn to Vim by Bill Powell (second story down). Why Word is a nightmare and vim is a dream.

Zenclavier: Extreme Keyboarding by Tom Christiansen.

It sometimes seems that, as time marches on, fewer and fewer people will get the chance to experience the sublime joy of becoming one with their computer. It’s as though hardware and software manufacturers were all conspiring to render this good, clean high an unattainable one. It’s not illegal, at least as far as I know, but for most people it might as well be. In pursuit of the dubious goal of producing idiot-proof, zero-learning-curve programs, even programs intended for heavy-duty use such as editors—arguably the most important piece of software you’ll use—have been turned into children’s toys, effectively expert-proofed. In mindless and unexamined pursuit of false efficiency, the programs’ authors have sacrificed the design attributes that let our fingers go about their proper business, get our faces up out of the mundane mechanics, and let our minds transcend the hardware and get into the program. They installed, if not outright roadblocks, then velocity regulators and gratuitous speedbumps….

Brief sitewide update tonight. Some weirdness might show up in feeds.