I found this quote from the page linked by that repo's README about what "structural regexps" are:
“The current UNIX® text processing tools are weakened by the built-in concept of a line. There is a simple notation that can describe the `shape' of files when the typical array-of-lines picture is inadequate. That notation is regular expressions. Using regular expressions to describe the structure in addition to the contents of files has interesting applications, and yields elegant methods for dealing with some problems the current tools handle clumsily. When operations using these expressions are composed, the result is reminiscent of shell pipelines.”
Seems like a rather insightful understanding and domain-widening effort when it comes to manipulating programs. I've always wanted something like paredit, but for everything else besides lisps.
It's just notably bad for beginners, and getting worse all the time. I've been in software for over three decades and I haven't seen the obsession this bad since Java, which has apparently come a long way towards UX, and also didn't ever put out new BS every six weeks that I can recall. Rust on the other hand, is an absolute nightmare for beginners. I've spent a lot of time throughout my career working with non-programming-inclined math and *-int people, and I've already seen one outfit crash and burn from trying to deal with it's complexity rather than just using Python/R/Matlab, because "safety" or because "performance" or whatever else somebody lied and told them.
This shouldn't become a Rust-bashing thread, I'm just genuinely curious if there's lesser-known "post-modern" text editors. It's crazy to think how many thousands of days I've accumulated in gedit... For how much we spend our time in editors, it still feels so primitive just typing things in a few bytes at a time and compiling, etc etc. Back in the early 2000s, I thought we were getting close to just Star-Trekking it, but alas. I have to read about whatever the shit a devcontainer is... to edit text...
I’m curious though how as a user of the editor the programming language even matters (beyond how complex it is to compile).
And if you do want to contribute I’m reasonably certain that helix by virtue of how it’s programmed is the easiest to contribute to I have come across.
I see what you mean, I suppose I should have clarified.
I want to dig into one of these editors for a stronger understanding of how they work, and using something as obtuse as Rust is a total nonstarter for me.
I read through the source of micro over a few weekends during the 2020 lockdowns and really enjoyed the experience, though I was woefully underprepared with spending that much time looking at Go, which I wasn't familiar with at the time. Even still, I felt relatively confident within a few hours.
Conversely, I've seen things like: https://fasterthanli.me/articles/a-half-hour-to-learn-rust from Rusties that just made me sick to my stomach. It's just ridiculous how many syntactical elements there are, and how little is done for the end-user by way of ergonomics. To top it off, people who've spend dozens (!!!) of hours with Rust still struggle with it. With Go, Python, maybe C, and others, I can typically bring students or grads up to speed enough to at least have a decent conversation about crucial code within a single workday.
I do think that the Rust ecosystem is a brittle one, despite the grandiose claims of safety and security, in that few people whose time is valuable and whose experience is vast would be spending their time wisely coming up to speed with the language in any scenario, even outside of text editors. The
Again, I'm not starting a Rust-bashing thread, esp not with someone invested in Rust, but that's where I'm coming from.
> I want to dig into one of these editors for a stronger understanding of how they work, and using something as obtuse as Rust is a total nonstarter for me.
I would be absolutely amazed if the language is what makes an editor easy/hard to understand unless that thing is written in whitespace/brainfuck. In this particular case the helix codebase is incredible easy to understand and contribute to, definitely easier than vim, neovim and others _despite_ the fact that it's written in Rust.
My project advances the state of the art, your project publishes updates, his project puts out new BS.[0]
Also, I'd like to know whoever's recommending Rust for _beginners_? Nobody should be doing that. Not even the most hardcore fan I know would push that.
I don't think rust is particularly bad for beginners. It makes subtle bugs harder to write, so the bugs you get tend to be pretty straightforward and easy to diagnose.
There is obviously a bit of upfront investment, but it's comparable to most other languages (less than C++, for example). I have a much easier time writing rust than C, for example, and I'm a very mediocre programmer.
