Our undergrad machines ran TOPS-20. Most of the terminals in the computer room (man, I'm dating myself here...) were lineprinters, but there were a few VT100s or similar. In the intro CS class they had us use a line editor, which probably wasn't really SOS (Son Of Stopgap) but felt kinda like it was. You edited files by...typing the line number of the line you wanted to change (which you'd previously gotten from a listing) and then either retyping it or maybe there was some cursor control so you could make finer edits. I don't remember any more.
So one day, maybe halfway through the class, I saw my TA using one of the VT100s and she was using a different editor. I saw no line numbers at all, and she was moving a cursor around and she could see more context and it just looked much better. So I said "gimme". She explained that this editor was harder and, also, most of the terminals couldn't support it (not being video terminals). I said "I don't care -- gimme". She told me maybe a dozen emacs commands, I found a cheat sheet somewhere, and off I went.
By the time I got access to my first Unix machine (BSD), where emacs was the norm at my school, I was already comfortable in the editor. That just left learning a new shell, so that wasn't bad.
no subject
So one day, maybe halfway through the class, I saw my TA using one of the VT100s and she was using a different editor. I saw no line numbers at all, and she was moving a cursor around and she could see more context and it just looked much better. So I said "gimme". She explained that this editor was harder and, also, most of the terminals couldn't support it (not being video terminals). I said "I don't care -- gimme". She told me maybe a dozen emacs commands, I found a cheat sheet somewhere, and off I went.
By the time I got access to my first Unix machine (BSD), where emacs was the norm at my school, I was already comfortable in the editor. That just left learning a new shell, so that wasn't bad.