It was packaged with DOS and Windows for a long time, was quick and reliable, and could edit files in binary mode. Personally, when I was first learning computers, it was the closest thing I had to a hex editor, and I edited all kinds of files with it - bitmaps, WAV files, EXE files, game save-state files.

The article itself says: "What motivated us to build Edit was the need for a default CLI text editor in 64-bit versions of Windows. 32-bit versions of Windows ship with the MS-DOS editor, but 64-bit versions do not have a CLI editor installed inbox."

[–] Dark_Arc@social.packetloss.gg 2 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Huh, thanks for the history and I missed that last part so thanks for that too!

It sounds like the original edit program might have been (at least partially) hand coded assembly or something (maybe some unportable C that made a variety of bad assumptions) if they were never able to port it to anything but 32-bit x86.

Maybe the new edit will gain any missing functionality eventually.

[–] deschutron@programming.dev 2 points 3 weeks ago

IIRC it was the loss of WoW in 64-bit Windows that killed it. WoW (Windows on Windows) was a 16-bit environment that ran on 32-bit NT-derived Windows systems, allowing them to run pre-95 applications and the MS-DOS environment. 64-bit Windows came out in the 00s, when Microsoft seemed to think the command-line was a relic of the past that they could afford to lose. Since then they've bought so much of the open source world, I think it's changed them.