Text Editor Wars : Multi-Edit versus ... Pizza?

In the late 80’s, my programming team was in search of a decent programmer’s text editor for MS-DOS. At the time, a number of editors seemed to have comparable features. Any missing features could often be added via the embedded macro language that each of these editors sported. What was it that helped to make the decision?

The advertisement from American Cybernetics above ( excerpted from the late, great Computer Language magazine ) caught our eye. The ad compared their Multi-Edit product to … pizza.

What really sold us was their $10 trial diskette. It was not common for software companies to offer fully functional trial editions, so this was also not like what we had seen in the trade press. We tried the trial version for about a month. It had a nag screen, but it was otherwise fully functional. Then, we all voted unanimously that this was our choice. We bought copies for everyone.

The DOS version remains one of my favorite text editors.