Starting to get jarred off with vscode as my editor. It eats CPU quite often (and I can't narrow it down; it doesn't seem to be an extension problem), and it does not handle well being started up with a file after an upgrade happens; sometimes it just forgets about some of my windows, which is extremely annoying and now I don't trust it. My move to it was prompted by it being where the momentum is, but in practice I use very few extensions, so that's not as important to me any more.

So, I'm vaguely considering a new programmer's editor. If you have suggestions, I'd be happy to hear them. Here are my requirements:
* I can open files in it, never save them, and they are not thrown away, even after restarts, even after upgrades to the editor. Never, ever throw away text in a window. Ever.
* multiple cursors
* runs on Ubuntu
* a programmer's editor, so syntax highlighting, etc
* reasonably popular, so extensions, a community, ongoing development
* not modal (no vim!)
* not slow

ok, so... I'm back to Sublime Text. Now I need to retrain my fingers to type "subl <whatever>" rather than "code <whatever>" again. Let's see how this works out.

@mavit doesn’t $EDITOR need to be a terminal one? In case debconf fires it up or something? Or is this rank superstition on my part?

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@sil Fair point; it doesn't need to run on a TTY (assuming you have a windowing system available), but it does need to be blocking. I was mainly trying to joke that typing $EDITOR would be more convenient than remembering the name of your chosen editor, though.

@mavit I think there's a $VISUAL that I could use. Is typing $ harder than remembering? That one might go to the judges :)

@sil @mavit if you set an alias, such as alias editor=whatever, it has the advantage of no $ prefix, *and* it won’t be used in non interactive context (debconf, shell scripts you run that inherit environment, etc)

@sil Nope, $VISUAL has been around so long that their idea of graphical was that your serial terminal had a screen rather than being a printer.

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