Sam editor tips draw fresh attention to a Plan 9 classic
A vintage tool, back in the spotlight
It has been reported that a Lobsters thread pointed readers to a compact collection of tips for Sam, the text editor Rob Pike developed for Plan 9 — the page lives at https://9lab.org/plan9/sam/. The write-up is short, practical and oddly charming: command snippets, usage patterns, and little tricks that make Sam sing. For anyone who remembers Acme and Plan 9, it feels like finding an old mixtape you forgot you loved.
What Sam actually offers
Sam is not a flashy IDE. It's a command-driven, scriptable editor with a terse language for selecting and transforming text — think powerful, orthogonal, and unapologetically utilitarian. The tips page walks through common workflows and shows how a few simple commands can replace a dozen mouse clicks. No bells. No bloat. Just tools that let you move fast if you’re willing to learn the moves.
Why people care now
Why the sudden interest? Developers are tired of feature-laden editors that do everything except write good code. There’s a mini-movement toward focused, modal, or command-centric editors (hello, Kakoune and Helix). Rediscovering Sam scratches the same itch: speed, composability, and an aesthetic that privileges tiny, elegant tools. The emotional hook is real — nostalgia mingled with the satisfaction of mastering something terse and efficient.
Ready to try it?
If you’re curious, the 9lab page is a tidy entry point with examples you can copy and paste. It has been reported that forks and ports to Unix exist, so you don’t need to run Plan 9 to experiment. Give it an afternoon. You might come away convinced that sometimes old-school is exactly what your workflow needs.
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