Sick of nano? You’re not alone.
I was that guy. Friday night, server on fire, trying to edit a config in nano. My buddy Luke on Zoom? He fixes the same bug in two minutes using this thing called Micro.
I lost three hours. Three. Hours.
That night I ran the numbers. Fifteen to twenty hours every month wrestling with a tool was written when MySpace was still cool. Sound familiar?
Five brutal truths about nano
- Stuck in 2016. Last real update was eight years ago. Before iPhone X, before AI copilots, before we all worked remotely.
- No brackets? Get ready to scroll like it’s 1995.
- Plugins? What plugins? It’s you, the keyboard, and raw text.
- Kids quit. My intern lasted three days before asking for VS Code. Three days.
- Deploy delays. Deployment scripts that should take minutes turn into coffee breaks… at 2 a.m.
Micro: the terminal editor that finally gets it
22,000 GitHub stars don’t lie. That number grew a thousand just last month. Here’s why.
Ctrl+S works.
End of story. Copy? Ctrl+C. Paste? Ctrl+V. Zero learning curve. My mom can use it.
Mouse support that works.
Click. Drag. Scroll. All in the terminal. Feels like cheating.
Plugins install like apps.
micro -plugin install lint
Suddenly you have error checking on save. Want fuzzy search? micro -plugin install fzf
My favorite trio:
- autofmt—Go code formats itself on save
- fzf—find any file in three keystrokes
- goplus—go-to-definition in a terminal editor
Install it right now
Ubuntu/Debian:
sudo apt-get install micro
macOS:
brew install micro
Windows:
choco install micro
Then do this:
micro ~/.config/micro/settings.json
{
"autosave": 5,
"syntax": true,
"tabsize": 2
}
Done. Really.
The moment it clicked for me
Monday morning I’m SSH’d into production. Last task: update an nginx route for the new feature.
Normally? Fifteen minutes of nano scrolling.
With Micro? Hit Ctrl+E (multi-cursor), change three lines at once, :w and out.
Thirty seconds.
Thirty seconds that became a promotion discussion.
But hey, nano still has a job
Logging into a 32 MB microcontroller? Nano wins.
Everything else? Micro eats its lunch.
I still keep nano on a DietPi in my garage. Tweeting config changes over LTE to my weather station. Perfect fit.
Stop making excuses
We’ve all said it: “I’ll switch tomorrow.”
Tomorrow became eight years. While the rest of us leveled up.
Try it. Takes three minutes to install, three minutes to fall in love.
Your 2 a.m. self will thank you.
Ready? Micro’s GitHub waits. No signup, no spam, just a better editor.
Or don’t. Spend another month scrolling through brackets. Your call.
Quick Q&A from the Slack channel
Q: Will my muscle memory from nano transfer?
A: Partially. Most save/quit keys match. ;help shows every shortcut in a popup.
Q: JavaScript file with 8,000 lines? Performance?
A: Smooth. I edit our Webpack config (9,012 lines as of this morning) daily. Search is instant.
Q: Vim mode for the purists?
A: Add "vim": true to settings. Modal editing. Everyone’s happy.
Q: Remote session over satellite link?
A: Yep. I maintain farmer sensors over LoRaWAN gateways with 200 ms latency. Works fine.
That’s it. Nano served us well. Now it’s time to move forward. Let’s build, not fight our tools.
