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The Efficiency of Vim
Published 2025 February 24 I learned to touch type in fifth grade. We would shuffle into the computer lab and open up Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing1.
In those days, the connection between a terminal and a mainframe was slow, so much so that a quick typist could outpace the network, entering commands faster than they could be sent for processing. A syntax-directed editor may treat grammar rules as generative (e.g., offering the user templates that correspond to one or more steps in a formal derivation of program text) or proscriptive (e.g., preventing a phrase of a given part of speech from being moved to a context where another part of speech is required) or analytic (e.g., parsing textual edits to create a structured representation). Language-sensitive editors may impose syntactic correctness as an absolute requirement (e.g., as did Mentor), or may tolerate syntax errors after issuing a warning (e.g., as did the Cornell Program Synthesizer).
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