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Why nano gets used
(lemmy.world)
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this post was submitted on 09 Aug 2026
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Nano is to EMacs/Vim as Notepad is to Notepad++ or VSCode (Nano has features Notepad doesn't, but you get the point).
I don't do a ton of code editing directly on the CLI. I do things like change parameters in config files or open a file to read it quickly. If I'm doing more heavy editing, I'll use a GUI editor (with an SFTP extension if I'm working on a headless server). So programs like Vim and EMacs have never been useful for me.
To each their own (and I have all the respect for anyone who knows how to exit Vim without looking it up) but I'm guessing the majority of people have a similar experience.
I spent enough time learning vim that I can do basic navigation and text editing. I'd like to be able to navigate efficiently like some of the savants out there, but the effort to get to that point is more than I'm willing to put into in.
Being good at nano does not transfer like notepad transfers to notepad++ or kwrite.
vim does not respect nano shortcuts and modes are simply a barrier: an extra keypress and another thing to keep track of. It slows you down significantly.
Noone good at nano would switch to vim naturally, you have to force yourself to endure until you catch back up to what you could long do in nano.
Conversely I don't know a single shortcut, behavior, or info notepad shows that np++ or kwrite don't have. Besides maybe bracket and quote completion in kwrite which you'd have to disable in settings.
And on the other hand the advantages are more directly visible, like tabs, syntax hilighting, ...
You might not immediately intuit the shortcuts for tab management, but you can still use tabs and then not return to notepad due to missing them.
Sure, Notepad transfers to other GUI programs better than Nano transfers to Vim or EMacs. But that has little to do with Notepad and more to do with GUIs typically supporting similar shortcuts. Like I said, it's an imperfect analogy.
I think you missed my original point. Most people wouldn't describe themselves as "good" or "bad" at Notepad or Nano. They're simple programs designed for simple editing. The learning curve is very low for both. Advanced editors have differing learning curves, but they're all a lot more steep.
And my original point was that, because many people do only simple editing in a CLI and more advanced editing in a GUI, it makes sense that Nano became the most popular for CLI due to its shallow learning curve.
You obviously haven't used much vim if you think modes slow you down. First it means you don't have to bring your right hand all the way to the arrows whenever you want to move the cursor, secondly it means you can use shortcuts without adding a modifier everytime - this translates to fewer keypresses.
I was talking about the new user experience. No new user can navigate without the arrow keys, the most you can expect is looking up i and esc to enter and exit edit mode, and then using both modes the same way being annoyed at being in the wrong mode when something doesn't work.
Keeping track of the modes is also obviously something only problematic to those not familiar with vim.