I have my TECO back

I know, you don’t get it. None of my friends understand.

But you see, I entered the computer programming world a long time ago on DEC PDP-11 systems running RSTS/E. And the real text editor was TECO, this completely overblown excuse for a text editor that was so incredibly powerful that I swore I could start World War III using it, if I had to.

It wasn’t just a text editor. It was a programming language. And it had full access to operating system calls. It was, by any rational standards, completely ridiculous. But everyone who really edited text files–and in those days, everything was either in text or in binary–used TECO.

And I’ve never, ever gotten as proficient with vi or vim as I was with TECO. And don’t even mention that monstrosity known as emacs. I have been missing my TECO for a very, very long time.

Somebody understands. TECO is now available for Linux and Mac OS X. There is a port for FreeBSD. Now I just have to figure out how to get it going on OpenBSD. And, um, since it’s been over twenty years since I last used TECO, remember what I’ve long forgotten.

But even as the rest of the world follows an uneven path to hell in a handbasket, I have my TECO. And no, I don’t plan to start World War III; the neoconservatives are already working on that. But they don’t have TECO.

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