Microsoft Edit

Original Article ↗ Hacker News Discussion ↗

Target audience and platforms

  • Thread disputes who this editor is “for.” The README says: users unfamiliar with terminals needing an accessible editor, especially on Windows.
  • Several argue it’s primarily a Windows 11 terminal editor that happens to run on Linux/macOS, analogous to PowerShell being cross‑platform but not “for Linux.”
  • Suggested use cases: Windows Server Core/Nano over SSH; admins who can’t use vi; scientists on clusters needing to edit SLURM scripts; people who just want a Notepad-like tool in a terminal.
  • Others say such users will never discover a GitHub repo and that clusters should instead provide higher‑level frontends.

Features, performance, and limitations

  • Praised for being a single, tiny, dependency‑free Rust binary (~200–220 KB) with mouse support, menus, fuzzy search, and regex find/replace.
  • People marvel at newline‑scanning performance (SIMD up to ~125 GB/s) but debate whether this is a meaningful metric versus “fun optimization.”
  • Major limitation: no syntax highlighting or LSP yet. Some see this as disqualifying versus micro/nvim; others note an open issue and focus on keeping binary size small.
  • Scripting/plugins are planned via DLLs; some advocate WASM instead, but that’s only under discussion.

Comparison with other terminal editors

  • Frequently compared to nano, micro, mcedit, dte, jed, tilde, Turbo Vision‑based editors.
  • Some want it as a “saner nano replacement” with CUA keybindings and mouse, especially for beginners.
  • Others defend vi/vim as ubiquitous and worth learning; detractors call its UX hostile and overkill for casual users.
  • Micro is repeatedly recommended as a richer TUI (Lua plugins, large‑file handling) but heavier; some complain about Go binary size and bloat.

Microsoft motives and ecosystem context

  • One explanation: Microsoft needed a small, SSH‑friendly, modeless editor bundled with Windows; this is not just a “for fun” rewrite of EDIT.COM, though it intentionally evokes it.
  • Skeptics see it as “nerd‑washing” or groundwork for future Copilot/AI integrations, noting bloat in Notepad and other Microsoft apps.
  • Broader tangents discuss PowerShell on Linux, WSL, and speculation about deeper Microsoft moves into Linux userland.

Security and distribution concerns

  • winget is criticized as a serious supply‑chain risk (open manifests, many random packages, weak author control); defenders compare it favorably to curl | bash and say manifests plus hashes and human review are sufficient.
  • Some prefer alternative installation paths (nix, manual build) and want packages for Flatpak/Snap/BSD.