OK thanks for clarifying. I understand your point better where I missed it before.
Still, I think there's some sense in being able to control your editor without moving your fingers from the home row, and learning unintuitive-but-powerful tools for a significant subset of users. If you spend eight hours a day most days using a text editor, then criteria like [ease-of-use to new-comers] ranks a lot lower than others, such as sheer power.
Regarding user expectations - the OS doesn't train users to use the arrows. Bash does, and only when it's in emacs mode. If you sat down at a Solaris console, often ksh would be the default prompt and arrows wouldn't work. Vi interaction would. (You can configure bash to work like this - this is how I work. set -o vi)
I realise that from the perspective of a new user, what I've said above that would feel like an insultingly meaningless technicality. That kind of thing used to drive me around the bend.
I strongly agree with your conclusion,
Anytime you talk about how UNIX-like systems have
evolved, there's a danger of falling into the trap of
hailing historical cruft as "misunderstood features."
But at the end of the day, it's still just historical
cruft.
I loathe "it should be that way because it is that way" justifications, or arguments that defend appalling design with "oh you just need to get comfortable with how it works".
Still, I think there's some sense in being able to control your editor without moving your fingers from the home row, and learning unintuitive-but-powerful tools for a significant subset of users. If you spend eight hours a day most days using a text editor, then criteria like [ease-of-use to new-comers] ranks a lot lower than others, such as sheer power.
Regarding user expectations - the OS doesn't train users to use the arrows. Bash does, and only when it's in emacs mode. If you sat down at a Solaris console, often ksh would be the default prompt and arrows wouldn't work. Vi interaction would. (You can configure bash to work like this - this is how I work. set -o vi)
I realise that from the perspective of a new user, what I've said above that would feel like an insultingly meaningless technicality. That kind of thing used to drive me around the bend.
I strongly agree with your conclusion,
I loathe "it should be that way because it is that way" justifications, or arguments that defend appalling design with "oh you just need to get comfortable with how it works".