I use stone tablets, myself

This blog entry by Mark Pilgrim is getting some attention today, and a surprising amount is favorable. By “surprising amount” I mean “anything above zero.”

I have no particular interest in WriteRoom or any of its full-screen brethren, and although I wouldn’t presume to tell other people how they should work, I can see where someone might decide that these programs are a foolish waste of resources and that the fools need to be put on notice.

But if we’re going to be putting fools on notice, it’s hard to ignore this:

Here’s the basic problem: you’re writing a text editor. Stop doing that. It’s 2007. Saying to yourself “I’m gonna build my own text editor” is as silly as saying “I’m gonna build my own build system” or “I’m gonna build my own amusement park.”

I’m glad Allan Odgaard wasn’t thinking this way a few years ago. I’d be using BBEdit and pondering a conversion to vim.

Tags: