Text Editors on akos.ma

Neovim

Fri, 12 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0200

Call me late to the party if you want, but I recently adopted Neovim as my new full-time text editor for work, and I have to say I’m very pleased of having done so.

Helix

Fri, 07 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0100

I’ve tried the Helix editor and, to be honest, I’m split. I have three specific things to say, though.

WordStar 7 for DOS

Fri, 24 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0100

I’m a Fedora Linux user, a very happy one at that, and there’s no shortage of decent text editors for Fedora; yet, I have to say that for the past few months I’ve been happily writing my text on the most awkward and backward editor you could think of… and it turned out to be one of the most pleasant writing experiences I’ve had in the past few years.

Word 5.5 on DOSBox

Fri, 29 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0100

Continuing with my exploration of old versions of Word in various platforms, I wanted to experience one of the last versions of Microsoft Word for DOS, Word 5.5. Here are the instructions to run it on any platform that supports DOSBox Staging.

Word 5.1a and Excel 4 for Mac on Basilisk II

Fri, 22 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0100

I’ve been using some famous versions of Microsoft apps lately, of the “pre-Office” era: Word 5.1a and Excel 4, which were both running on the Macs available to students at the high school I attended in Geneva around 1993. This article provides the instructions for you to do the same with Basilisk II.

On Documentation

Fri, 29 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0200

In my career I’ve seen lots of teams struggling, not only to get their software out of the door, but much more often (even if successful in the previous step) to have a decent level of documentation next to it.

EditPlus

Fri, 24 Mar 2023 00:00:00 +0100

Last week I was celebrating the 20 years of my Harman Kardon SoundSticks, but last Monday there was another anniversary that some of us celebrated fondly: EditPlus 1.0, released March 20th, 1998, is 25 years old!

Stockholm Syndrome in Software

Fri, 16 Dec 2022 00:00:00 +0100

Developers working for a particular vendor tend to develop a bizarre version of Stockholm syndrome. It’s something I’ve witnessed at least twice in my career.

Text Editors for Work

Fri, 21 Jan 2022 00:00:00 +0100

There has been a particular text editor that defined each period of my career as a software developer. This article is a summary of that history, so far.

Lots of VSCode Extensions

Fri, 29 Oct 2021 00:00:00 +0200

The recent release by Microsoft of vscode.dev, the online version of Visual Studio Code, made me think of all the different things I do with VSCode, including this blog. And of course, being productive in VSCode means, to a large extent, finding gems across a seemingly infinite number of extensions.