The following are parody lyrics to the song Pico and Sepulveda, about text editors. I imagine that if someone sang them, I’d want to make a music video consisting of the lyrics shown in each text editor in time with the song.

pico, emacs, ed, vi,
pico, emacs, ed, vi…

SublimeText
mcedit
or Notepad…
++

xedit,
TextEdit
or Notepad…
++

You can use BBEdit
or an IDE,
EVE or Atom or ex.

TeachText never vexed
but for NeXT I want to feel
perplexed and try escaping out of

pico, emacs, ed, vi…

to NotePad…
++

The editor you can quit!

∎

This idea popped into my head when I saw yet another thread of people discussing their favourite text editors. Writing these lyrics did nothing to get them out of my head, so let’s see if putting them here works.

Pico is the editor I typically use if I must use a command-line editor, because it’s fairly easy to use even when I haven’t used it for a while and don’t remember any secrets, and most importantly, it’s easy to exit. I usually use GUI text editors though. If I’ve left out your favourite editor, just paste these lyrics into said editor and edit them.

In other news, I’m making a halfhearted effort at NanoRhymo over on Twitter… ostensibly a short, rhyming poem for each day of November, but I started late and have only done 16 so far, plus this one, all in a thread:

Also, my poem They Might Not Be Giants is in issue 10 of Chalkdust magazine, just in time for me to go to the MathsJam Annual Gathering this weekend. I’ll bring a few larger-than-usual posters of it in case anyone wants them.