# A brief and incomplete history of modal text editors

DevFeed: [A brief and incomplete history of modal text editors](<https://devfeed.tech/articles/a-brief-and-incomplete-history-of-modal-text-editors-37705.md>)

Original publisher: [Read original article](<https://carlosbecker.com/posts/ed/>)

Author: Carlos Alexandro Becker

Published: 2023-08-20T00:00:00Z

Content type: article

Language: en

Sources: [Carlos Becker](<https://devfeed.tech/sources/carlos-becker.md>)

Topics: [Vim](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/vim.md>), [Unix](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/unix.md>), [Programming](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/programming.md>)

Tags: [editor](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/editor.md>), [history](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/history.md>), [text](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/text.md>), [unix](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/unix.md>), [vim](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/vim.md>)

## AI overview

The article provides a brief, explicitly incomplete history of modal text editors, covering the author's early experiences with Turbo C and Vim before discussing Ed, Ex, and Vi. It explains modal editing and describes how Vi developed from Ex and Ed.

## Source excerpt

In this post I'm going to talk about some old text editors you probably never heard of, what is modal text editing, and why people like it so much.