I think I lost the lede when the author implied text editors were simple and easy. My understanding is that text editing uses sophisticated data structures and is actually a really difficult problem to solve. Especially when combined with lock free replication used in multi-user editing. This is not easy or simple and comparing it to a terminal editor felt disingenuous.
I can relate to the disenchantment but I found the argument here to fall flat.
Yes 100%. Plain text editing, especially with any sort of highlighting or parsing, is hard. But I'm also struggling to think of a common and modern "text editor" with high latency like that. When I think "text editor" I think of something only capable of saving and loading plain text, with some plugin support. Stock VSCode is exceptional at this. So is neovim. So is Microsoft Notepad. So is Sublime Text. So is Nova.app.
He has SOME editor in mind, I'm just curious what it is.
> lock free replication used in multi-user editing
I understand that author was referring to the concept of a minimal version that does just text editing and nothing more. Add features to anything and it will stop being simple and easy.
However, the author might also be generalizing and referring to "MS Word" as a text editor, which a lot of people unfortunately do. This is where I would disagree with the author's premise.
I can relate to the disenchantment but I found the argument here to fall flat.