I never became used to it, because I never tried really, but IIRC Wordstar has a very smart keyboard layout, really thought out. Word relies on arrow keys, but those are not always in great places on the keyboard. (Otherwise, arrow keys are a fine way to move the cursor around, IMHO.)
Also IIRC, you could work with folding and chapters very fast in Wordstar. This is also a benefit vs Word, which is WYSIWYG drivel^H^H^H^H^H^H driven.
Emacs/VIM, well... I live and die by Emacs (vim before) but seriously, it's a huge kludge, all of it. I love it to pieces, but it's really a very complex beast. Only bested by Eclipse in beastliness, which is also great for similar reasons Emacs is. You can do anything with both, if you put in a big effort. But it still pays off.
VSCode/Atom, only dabbled with these, they seem like Emacs + shiny to me. I respect shiny, but personally, I don't need it.
Lyx - tried it a bit. I think the problem for me, was that it promised too much. But if there are problems, you still need to know LaTex and I found myself back in Emacs and googling for LaTex error.
Wordstar/Wordtsar - for me those things are for writing books or large documentation. Personally I'd still use Emacs, because I use it for so much else. I'd still FOMO a little bit about the road not taken, but we have to use the time we wisely.
(Also, Wordstar = warm fuzzy thoughts about CP/M machines with amber monochrome monitors.)
My credentials: In high school and university, I used WordStar 3.3 on CP/M. Today I'm a technical writer. I reluctantly stopped using WordStar when WordPerfect pushed it off the stage.
It's hard to state advantages WordStar has over modern editors. Maybe looking at it in a historical context helps.
User friendly: WordStar was for non-technical users. "User friendly" was frequently abused in industry marketing. The implication of user hostility was real. You often had to assemble your computer from a kit. I don't mean plug in an SSD and a graphics card. I mean solder chips onto a board and cross your fingers. A non-techie could use WordStar out of the box.
Power users: Newbies dedicated 1/3 of screen space to an interactive command list. Power users used all screen space for text.
WYSIWYG: Editing and formatting were traditionally separate programs. Competitors sorta kinda integrated them. WordStar seamlessly combined them for the best WYSIWYG that display hardware allowed.
Flow: If there is a genuine advantage, this is it. WordStar was for professional touch typists, like secretaries and writers, paid to bang out words all day. But keyboards were simpler, typically 50-60 keys. WordStar used only Shift and Control as meta keys and laid out its keyboard commands intuitively. WordStar let you stay in the flow to get to your final draft quickly.
Adaptable: Computer, printer, and communication hardware rivaled the Cambrian explosion in variety and incompatibility. WordStar worked predictably on serial terminals, dedicated displays, and daisywheel and dot matrix printers, serial or parallel, one floppy or two.
Ecosystem: MicroPro and third parties supported WordStar with many add-on applications for spelling, mail merge, and so on. Yes, spell checking was an extra.
Nostalgia: WordStar pushed the envelope in its day. Comparing it to today's editors and word processors, WordStar is quaint. But maybe since then we've forgotten some important reasons about why we use computers. WordTsar might be a good reminder.
I don't think anyone is arguing that Wordstar is coming back to compete with modern editors. It was written in 1978. This is nostalgia. But for those of us who used Wordstar to write high school and college papers, it is well-received nostalgia, and well done.
And until a few months ago, he blogged on livejournal. I'm glad it works for him, but he isn't exactly an example of keeping up with the latest tech. (Nor is he known for his efficiency and speed of delivery.)
The hot new thing this year is “no distraction” modes, running a single app full screen with no notifications or any extraneous widgets. OSX and W10 both have new features for it. I see this as capitalising in that theme
This is hilarious, given that the big drawback with DOS was single-tasking. Whats old is new again. I would agree that there are a ton of distractions now and sometimes I need to close my email/chat to get any work done.
Actually I disagree. This isn't the old becoming new again, it's just that the terrible modern web UX design has been slowly spilling over the desktop to the point that some people now want to reclaim their attention spans. Nobody objects downloading something in the background or compiling while you read a pdf full screen or playing some music etc. It's notifications from every social media and the lack of granular control over them that's killing "modern" multitasking.
