10 ms·

Vim Boss

1268 points by bpierre 3y ago

cryptonector 3y ago
> Even when treated rudely, Bram usually responded only to advance his understanding of a problem to solve. This admirable. Over time I've become a maintainer of one or two somewhat important open source codebases. One of the codebase owners that invited me to maintain their codebase, a very kind Swedish fellow, didn't know what kind of maintainer I might turn out to be, so when he invited me over beers he explained that a maintainer should be gentle with contributors the way a parent should be gentle with a young child when the child shows them a drawing they made. That image stuck with me. I don't know if I would have been a rude maintainer w/o that talk, but I often think of it, and I try to live up to that every time.
michaelmrose 3y ago
It is nice to see tasteful and profitable disagreement in place of simple drama. It's a credit to all parties.
- tequila_shot 3y ago
  sorry, what disagreement? I didn't find any in the article.
  - ampersandy 3y ago
    The implied disagreement for why neovim exists to provide functionality that wouldn’t have been merged into vim.
  - BlackjackCF 3y ago
    Some people take issue with NeoVim, because they believe it splits the Vim community and takes people power away from Vim development.
    - SpaceManNabs 3y ago
      > because they believe it splits the Vim community and takes people power away from Vim development I don't understand this point, and I tried to parse it and still don't. (I understand that you are just relaying it). If vim maintainers don't want neovim to exist, they should have accepted the merges earlier. If they disagree with the merges (which I think they did), then that power doesn't belong in Vim anyways. edit: this reminds me of this conversation from years ago https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14245705 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14245705 Check DSMan195276's comments. And finally before I derail, I want to bring stuff back to the focus: RIP Braam.
      - coldtea 3y ago
        >I don't understand this point, and I tried to parse it and still don't. (...) If vim maintainers don't want neovim to exist, they should have accepted the merges earlier. If they disagree with the merges (which I think they did), then that power doesn't belong in Vim anyways It's a very simple point to understand: whether the merges are good or not, the presence of a fork still "splits the Vim community and takes people power away from Vim development". And if they're bad (which is the way they see it), they do it for no good reason too. That's regardless of people "having the right to fork". Yes they do. But also yes, if they exercize that right, they do split a community and divert interest from a project to 2 projects.
        falcolas 3y ago
        What splits it more, IMO, is that neovim went in a non-compatible direction with many of their design choices. They have good arguments for doing so, but it still means that writing community plugins that can work with either version of vim is inherently harder.
        coldtea 3y ago
        I guess if they haven't gotten in a non-compatible direction, then they wouldn't have made enough change to guarantee a fork.
  - michaelmrose 3y ago
    Disagreement insofar as the direction of vim. Neovim choosing to go there on way on functionality they wanted to implement both ultimately enriched vim as some ideas found there way into vim proper and gave the community additional options. Such splits aren't always handled well and value is lost when good ideas aren't merged back because of personal reasons and when contributors stop contributing because they are turned off by the drama. See libav vs ffmpeg.
- dudus 3y ago
  Is there any disagreement on who is going to support Vim moving forward? I can see the fork maintainers going into a power struggle if the future is unclear. Maybe some will even write fluffy pieces on how much they loved Bram to gather support...
  - lost_tourist 3y ago
    Neovim and vim are very independent projects, so this doesn't really affect neovim all that much. Is that what you're talking about?
    - jgb1984 3y ago
      Not entirely correct since neovim never stopped merging upstream patches from vim. So what happens in vim does influence neovim.
MSFT_Edging 3y ago
I once interviewed an intern candidate who bragged about getting into an argument with Bram on the mailing lists over a possible vulnerability. Bram insisted it was not important, and this young gun insisted it was. We didn't hire the guy. It's interesting seeing these memorials for Bram, from what people say he was the polar opposite of this kid in a good way.
- sitzkrieg 3y ago
  at least they cared enough to stick to their guns i guess
  - dudus 3y ago
    Indeed, not 100% clear but it felt like GP was criticizing the kid. The kid enters a security related conversation and Bram not only listens but engages in the conversation. Seems like you missed on a great hire.
    - cweagans 3y ago
      Bram listened to and engaged in most conversations, I think. He was very approachable.
    - MSFT_Edging 3y ago
      The young guy was fairly skilled at technical stuff, but his story about arguing with Bram was an insight into his interpersonal skills. It wasn't what lost him the spot though. I personally liked him but he didn't really perform on the nuts and bolts challenges we present to candidates. They're not particularly difficult challenges, just things to see how a candidate approaches a problem. I don't remember what exactly was disconcerting about his approach but I feel like he took a lot of short cuts via google searching and didn't exactly understand what he was doing. This was years ago back when we did in-person interviews though, so my memory isn't 100% on it. We have a lot of extremely intelligent people with small egos at my company and cockyness like that doesn't really fit super well with our group.
  - 3y ago
djha-skin 3y ago
I'm shocked. I've been a vim user my whole life. I use neovim lately, but I didn't even know Bram was dead. I've never interacted with him personally, but I've interacted with the tool he wrote and the documentation he wrote almost on a daily basis. Vim is part of me. I know the project will likely continue, but I can't help but thinking: what now? It brings up this issue of death in software for me. Software is getting old enough now that it is starting to outlive its authors. RIP Anthony Grimes and Ian Murdock. I have used both of these men's software after their demise[1][2], and I am grateful for it. However, it does make me think. Grimes' software continues to have issues filed against it[3] by folks unaware that no one is getting notifications for them. On the other hand, Debian was popular enough to continue after Ian's passing, and continues to gain momentum. I know it might be too soon for me to wonder about these questions to an audience. These were the giants on whose shoulders we continue to work today. I'm glad their code persists. 1: https://github.com/Raynes/fs https://github.com/Raynes/fs 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_Murdock https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_Murdock 3: https://github.com/Raynes/fs/pulls https://github.com/Raynes/fs/pulls
- metadat 3y ago
  Bram Moolenaar's passing became public last Saturday: Bram Moolenaar has died - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37011324 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37011324 (4272 points, 430 comments)
- deltarholamda 3y ago
  There is another thread on HN about vim development going forward, posted on the Google Group for vim development. Christian Brabandt mentions several issues that will need to be resolved, e.g. the hosting situation for the site. I feel that this would be an ideal thing for one of the various open source foundations to address. I.e., provide a single-source hosting environment for open source projects without needing to lean on for-profit corporations, which would include some form of hit-by-a-bus solution for those projects that lose a core (or sole) developer. Trying to piece this stuff together after the fact is always a chore. And no amount of "well, they should have a plan in place" will help. People don't think they're going to die tomorrow, so there's always a reason to put it off for later, so they do. I don't think anybody's worried about Linux going poof if Linus unexpectantly returns to his home planet, but there are plenty of projects that might have some issues. Having all of the domains, DNS, hosting, etc. somewhere with a real employee that can be contacted to move control to new people if required is a good thing.
bilekas 3y ago
So often we hear after someone dies how great they really where when infact they were like most people, a mixed bag. We all have ups and downs etc. There are some though that really do live up to the postmortem messages and for sure Bram is one of them, i was lucky to meet him and actually spend some time shooting shit with him. At the time i didn't realize how big a deal he was, it was only later i would actually get to know and appreciate VIM, but from all of that it made me appreciate him a lot more. So when I read these kind of posts i can't help feel sad of course but I do get shivers of how damn ossum he really was. The testimonials to him hit so hard knowing they're 100% genuine. We need more like him, he will be really missed.
- topher200 3y ago
  I occasionally ponder on how frustrating it is that the deceased don't get to hear their eulogies. It would have been amazing for Bram to have been able to experience all the outpouring of support and love from people he is interacted with during his life. Especially in a context where the speakers aren't considering him as an audience -- they're sharing their deep and true feelings. No one can really be sure how their acquaintances feel about them. Eulogies are the closest we get. Imagine if he were able to hear all these great things said about him... It would be such a joy.
  - beachy 3y ago
    Off topic but your comment makes me think of Nick Drake. He died at 26, before even knowing he'd achieved anything, his music barely listened to, probably feeling a failure. Posthumously he's one of the world's most acclaimed recording artists. RIP Bram.
    - block_dagger 3y ago
      Good example, although Van Gogh is probably the more cited.
      - mongol 3y ago
ansible 3y ago
Thanks Bram. I've been using Vim (and sometimes more recently Neovim) for over 30 years (nearly every work day of my entire career), having used `vi` on various BSD systems in school. In all that time, I've never been on the mailing list for Vim, asked a question or submitted a bug report. I've never needed to do so. Because I've never run into a bug or had a question that couldn't be answered by the built in documentation. A quality software project, lead by a quality man. You've been an inspiration.
- dkga 3y ago
  [flagged]
- jayknight 3y ago
  It was 25 years ago this fall that I got a job in the IT department of my university and my boss gave me the perl and vi O'Reilly books so I could start programming on the unix servers. Like you, I've used it (and vim) every day of my career since then.
- nemo8551 3y ago
  I have to agree here, I’ve worked on some tremendously complex control systems and the documentation has been so good that anytime I’ve needed info it was easy to find. I’ve also worked on relatively simple systems that have required more interrogation due to a lack of, or in one case absolutely terrible documentation.
RetroTechie 3y ago
Thought a linked article: https://j11g.com/2023/08/07/the-legacy-of-bram-moolenaar/ https://j11g.com/2023/08/07/the-legacy-of-bram-moolenaar/ By Jan van den Berg, was a better read. One quote: "Vim is a masterpiece, the gleaming precise machining tool from which so much of modernity was crafted". And then this link: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=eX9m3g5J-XA https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=eX9m3g5J-XA "7 Habits for Effective Text Editing 2.0" 1h20m - If anyone has a transcript or summary: plz. But this was funny - first comment: "I let auto play go on while I was sleeping for 7 hours and went from Billie Eilish to this" Life is weird but I love it :-) Disclaimer: I'm not even user of either (Neo)vim or Emacs. As soon as I read "programmable", I'm off. I just prefer fixed-function editor that suits my taste , a few minutes of configuration & go. But that's just me, what do I know? That said: good tools serve a purpose. Our world is a better place with good tools in it - and the ppl who made those tools. And sometimes their legacy, their philosophy, their way of doing things, lives on in the code (or the community!) they left behind. So kudoz to Bram!
- RGBCube 3y ago
  > Disclaimer: I'm not even user of either of (Neo)vim or Emacs. As soon as I read "programmable", I'm off. I just prefer fixed-function editor that suits my taste , a few minutes of configuration & go. But that's just me, what do I know? Then Helix may be for you! It uses the Kakoune keybinds, which make SO MUCH SENSE compared to Vim or Emacs. And it's already pre configured and includes a lot of useful features. I have been daily driving it and it's pretty fast and good. Since it automatically uses LSPs if they are in the PATH, it requires very minimal configuration, my configuration only includes theme and some stylistic changes, you can take a look at it if you'd like: https://github.com/RGBCube/NixOSConfiguration/blob/master/machines/asus/helix/default.nix https://github.com/RGBCube/NixOSConfiguration/blob/master/ma...
  - __MatrixMan__ 3y ago
    I've been a happy vimmer for 15 years. I've been dabbling in helix for a month and liking it a lot. The ast-aware selection capabilities--while not habit yet--feel like a fledgling superpower.
aprao 3y ago
I reflected on my Vim journey after Bram passed away. It has been my only constant professional companion in the past 10 years - from university projects to FAANGs to everything-on-fire startups. All professional work I have done - the ones I am proud of, the ones that I am ashamed of, the ones that got me promotions and the ones that resulted in $M SEVs - was done on Vim. Oses/DBs/PLs/companies/co-workers come and go, but Vim has been forever. Thanks Bram.
Dulat_Akan 3y ago
keep going bro good post
vjust 3y ago
thanks Bram.
parentheses 3y ago
Aside from the POSIX toolchain/kernel/etc and browser (which I'd use if it neatly embedded into vim), vim and its siblings are together the most used program on my machine. It's only today that I am forced to think about this: One person drove that program from an idea in their head to a high-quality, hackable program that I've fallen in love with over the years! A program that I have used for so many hours, but has never crashed once (neovim does crash, but vim has never done this for me.) This is an impressive feat given the sheer volume of vim plugins and configurations I've gone through! Thank you Bram! You built an amazing program and the community around it!
gitaarik 3y ago
Today at a train station in the Netherlands (Utrecht) I noticed something special. I saw the letters hjkl on the sign in reverse order. These letters indentify the platform areas where you can enter the train. Depending on the length of the platform and the area where the train has entrances, it shows the letters. https://postimg.cc/mcCWhMXw https://postimg.cc/mcCWhMXw Either this was super coincidence, or someone at the NS (the Dutch train company) is a vim fan and payed tribute to Bram like this.
- gitaarik 3y ago
  Although, thinking about it now, the letters do come after each other in the alpbabeth except that the I is missing between the H and J, but maybe they did that intentionally because it can be confused with the lower case L. So maybe just coincidence after all, but still it was special for me. I never saw this at the trains and now suddenly the week after Bram passed away this shows up.
  - Affric 3y ago
    Regardless it’s touching that it made you think of Bram
  - mkl 3y ago
    The partially alphabetic middle row of QWERTY is a remnant of an alphabetic layout that preceded it. QWERTY reduced typewriter jamming by moving common consecutive letters away from each other.
- zabzonk 3y ago
  not a coincedence or tribute - same has been the same in the uk for many years. the letter "i" is typically not used for such purposes because it can so easily be confused with numeric "1" or alpha "l".
  - tremon 3y ago
    Pretty sure it's a tribute -- local trains in NL do not have named carriages FAFAIK, because there's no reserved seating. Only international trains have those indicators, and they do not go to Den Helder.
zgluck 3y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benevolent_dictator_for_life https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benevolent_dictator_for_life has a list of BDFLs. Bram is the first BDFL in that list who has passed away. We're in for a generational shift the coming decade(s). It makes sense to prepare - that is how you preserve a legacy, and the community. I've been impressed with how Bram's passing has been handled by his family and friends with respect to his legacy and the future of vim.
- zgluck 3y ago
  So the result of me writing this was that John Gruber was added as the BDFL of Markdown. Creator, sure, BDFL, that's a stretch.
chaps 3y ago
Vim has had a legitimate impact on my life. Over the past 15 years I've been using it, "set -o vi" and similar in psql/ipython get added into my rc files almost immediately on a new host. Many, many hours upon hours of living in a shell have been made so much more enjoyable because of his work. Thank you for posting this. Rest in peace, friend.
- imiric 3y ago
  Same here. Learning Vim commands has had one of the greatest ROI of anything I know. It's been invaluable over the years, and has probably saved me hundreds of hours of interacting with a computer. It's become muscle memory a long time ago, and editing text and moving a cursor on the screen takes no effort at all. It's one of those things I always suggest to new programmers. Learning Vim may arguably have a steep learning curve, but it will open your eyes to a different and more efficient way of interacting with text, which is something you constantly do as a programmer. I've enabled Vi(m) mode everywhere it's supported: from shells and everything that uses Readline, to making it the default in Emacs via evil-mode. The modal interface and mnemonic commands that can be combined in different ways is a far superior and more intuitive UI than the Emacs key chord UI. I love Vim. It's what got me started on this journey 20+ years ago. I still use it daily for quick edits, but prefer Emacs as an IDE, as it's a more extensible environment. With evil-mode, I get the best of both worlds. :) Bram has improved so many of our lives, and deserves to be recognized among the all time greats in our industry. RIP.
29athrowaway 3y ago
Bram is a guy who could have chosen to make millions but instead helped millions.
emerongi 3y ago
Vim has soul. It is that chisel you inherited from your grandpa that you keep using. It fits well in your grip and is comfortable, even though it lacks the soft rubber that the new ones in the store have. It's a tool with its own history. Reading the comments here, it seems that the hacker's mentality still lives on. The new young billion-dollar company will be replaced in another 10-20 years. Vim lives on. I wish to build a Vim of my own one day.
- keepamovin 3y ago
  That’s a great way to put it. Who are you?
- pavlov 3y ago
  A slight difference though. If a newbie picks up grandpa's chisel, it doesn't get glued onto their hand until they google the three magic words they must shout to make the chisel come off.
  - gpmcadam 3y ago
    I understand your metaphor but I think it's probably a stretch. Maybe it's better to say the tool has sharp edges that if you aren't familiar with it, can bite you. But with a bit of practise and some knowledge you can master it.
    - pavlov 3y ago
      It's not a stretch that practically everybody who accidentally ends up in vim (often because it's git's default editor) ends up googling how to exit the program. It's the tool that you can't even drop by any intuitive action.
      - tough 3y ago
        Closing the terminal app is pretty intuitive to me. Restart your computer if all else fails
beefsack 3y ago
I thought this was quite well written. "Be pragmatic, not dogmatic" is a very sensible rule of thumb.
izolate 3y ago
In a world of fleeting software, Vim is a timeless masterpiece. I only wish I had the opportunity to thank Bram for the impact he's had on my life and career, because I don't think I would have come as far without Vim.
- grozmovoi 3y ago
  I think this is one of the main important things about vim. The longer it exists , the longer it will. It has outlived so many modern text editors. I hope that it lives on as long as I live and longer.
1-2-3-5-8 3y ago
Thank you Bram for everything. Your talk, 7 Habits For Effective Text Editing 2.0 inspired me and it started my Vim journey. Using Vim all these years has been a complete joy. You will not be forgotten. Link to the talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p6K4iIMlouI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p6K4iIMlouI
trymas 3y ago
From a linked article [0] there's a screenshot of Bram's github activity and this text: > Sad > Perhaps all these things add up to why it hit me when I read the news that Bram had passed away. In the message, his family made it clear that Bram was ill (‘a medical condition that progressed quickly over the last few weeks‘). This was unknown to most people and made the news all the more surprising. > And it made me even sadder when someone pointed out Bram’s recent GitHub activity. https://github.com/brammool https://github.com/brammool [0] https://j11g.com/2023/08/07/the-legacy-of-bram-moolenaar/ https://j11g.com/2023/08/07/the-legacy-of-bram-moolenaar/ EDIT: From BDFL list in Wikipedia Bram seems to be the first to be marked as †. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benevolent_dictator_for_life https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benevolent_dictator_for_life
im_coder 3y ago
Thanks Bram, RIP .
sremani 3y ago
I sucked at Vim. My tribute to Bram will be to learn it and master it. It is one shoulders of these giants we ALL stand on.
AltruisticGapHN 3y ago
Is there anything like MacVim on linux these days? I mean gVIM is pretty usable with tabs but I'm wondering if anybody cared enough to make something a little fancier GUI wise? Just good looking slick window decorations, better integrated with eg. GNOME in Ubuntu. More crucially has anybody ever made a faster render? I mean it´s 2023 and I'm still seeing gvim in Ubuntu redraw my tabs from top to bottom in maybe 0.1 sec but it's definitely noticeable.
gsinclair 3y ago
I really appreciated this post. Bram was a hero for his long term dedication to such a great piece of software, and for the great design he put into it that made so many people’s lives better. Justin and the other Neovim developers are heroes for making a great piece of software even greater. Despite all the drama that people like to confect, the Neovim devs always show the proper respect to Vim and Bram.

1268 points by bpierre 3y ago

> Even when treated rudely, Bram usually responded only to advance his understanding of a problem to solve. This admirable. Over time I've become a maintainer of one or two somewhat important open source codebases. One of the codebase owners that invited me to maintain their codebase, a very kind Swedish fellow, didn't know what kind of maintainer I might turn out to be, so when he invited me over beers he explained that a maintainer should be gentle with contributors the way a parent should be gentle with a young child when the child shows them a drawing they made. That image stuck with me. I don't know if I would have been a rude maintainer w/o that talk, but I often think of it, and I try to live up to that every time.

michaelmrose 3y ago

It is nice to see tasteful and profitable disagreement in place of simple drama. It's a credit to all parties.

tequila_shot 3y ago
sorry, what disagreement? I didn't find any in the article.
- ampersandy 3y ago
  The implied disagreement for why neovim exists to provide functionality that wouldn’t have been merged into vim.
- BlackjackCF 3y ago
  Some people take issue with NeoVim, because they believe it splits the Vim community and takes people power away from Vim development.
  - SpaceManNabs 3y ago
    > because they believe it splits the Vim community and takes people power away from Vim development I don't understand this point, and I tried to parse it and still don't. (I understand that you are just relaying it). If vim maintainers don't want neovim to exist, they should have accepted the merges earlier. If they disagree with the merges (which I think they did), then that power doesn't belong in Vim anyways. edit: this reminds me of this conversation from years ago https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14245705 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14245705 Check DSMan195276's comments. And finally before I derail, I want to bring stuff back to the focus: RIP Braam.
    - coldtea 3y ago
      >I don't understand this point, and I tried to parse it and still don't. (...) If vim maintainers don't want neovim to exist, they should have accepted the merges earlier. If they disagree with the merges (which I think they did), then that power doesn't belong in Vim anyways It's a very simple point to understand: whether the merges are good or not, the presence of a fork still "splits the Vim community and takes people power away from Vim development". And if they're bad (which is the way they see it), they do it for no good reason too. That's regardless of people "having the right to fork". Yes they do. But also yes, if they exercize that right, they do split a community and divert interest from a project to 2 projects.
      - falcolas 3y ago
        What splits it more, IMO, is that neovim went in a non-compatible direction with many of their design choices. They have good arguments for doing so, but it still means that writing community plugins that can work with either version of vim is inherently harder.
        coldtea 3y ago
        I guess if they haven't gotten in a non-compatible direction, then they wouldn't have made enough change to guarantee a fork.
- michaelmrose 3y ago
  Disagreement insofar as the direction of vim. Neovim choosing to go there on way on functionality they wanted to implement both ultimately enriched vim as some ideas found there way into vim proper and gave the community additional options. Such splits aren't always handled well and value is lost when good ideas aren't merged back because of personal reasons and when contributors stop contributing because they are turned off by the drama. See libav vs ffmpeg.
dudus 3y ago
Is there any disagreement on who is going to support Vim moving forward? I can see the fork maintainers going into a power struggle if the future is unclear. Maybe some will even write fluffy pieces on how much they loved Bram to gather support...
- lost_tourist 3y ago
  Neovim and vim are very independent projects, so this doesn't really affect neovim all that much. Is that what you're talking about?
  - jgb1984 3y ago
    Not entirely correct since neovim never stopped merging upstream patches from vim. So what happens in vim does influence neovim.

MSFT_Edging 3y ago

I once interviewed an intern candidate who bragged about getting into an argument with Bram on the mailing lists over a possible vulnerability. Bram insisted it was not important, and this young gun insisted it was. We didn't hire the guy. It's interesting seeing these memorials for Bram, from what people say he was the polar opposite of this kid in a good way.

sitzkrieg 3y ago
at least they cared enough to stick to their guns i guess
- dudus 3y ago
  Indeed, not 100% clear but it felt like GP was criticizing the kid. The kid enters a security related conversation and Bram not only listens but engages in the conversation. Seems like you missed on a great hire.
  - cweagans 3y ago
    Bram listened to and engaged in most conversations, I think. He was very approachable.
  - MSFT_Edging 3y ago
    The young guy was fairly skilled at technical stuff, but his story about arguing with Bram was an insight into his interpersonal skills. It wasn't what lost him the spot though. I personally liked him but he didn't really perform on the nuts and bolts challenges we present to candidates. They're not particularly difficult challenges, just things to see how a candidate approaches a problem. I don't remember what exactly was disconcerting about his approach but I feel like he took a lot of short cuts via google searching and didn't exactly understand what he was doing. This was years ago back when we did in-person interviews though, so my memory isn't 100% on it. We have a lot of extremely intelligent people with small egos at my company and cockyness like that doesn't really fit super well with our group.
- 3y ago

djha-skin 3y ago

I'm shocked. I've been a vim user my whole life. I use neovim lately, but I didn't even know Bram was dead. I've never interacted with him personally, but I've interacted with the tool he wrote and the documentation he wrote almost on a daily basis. Vim is part of me. I know the project will likely continue, but I can't help but thinking: what now? It brings up this issue of death in software for me. Software is getting old enough now that it is starting to outlive its authors. RIP Anthony Grimes and Ian Murdock. I have used both of these men's software after their demise[1][2], and I am grateful for it. However, it does make me think. Grimes' software continues to have issues filed against it[3] by folks unaware that no one is getting notifications for them. On the other hand, Debian was popular enough to continue after Ian's passing, and continues to gain momentum. I know it might be too soon for me to wonder about these questions to an audience. These were the giants on whose shoulders we continue to work today. I'm glad their code persists. 1: https://github.com/Raynes/fs https://github.com/Raynes/fs 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_Murdock https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_Murdock 3: https://github.com/Raynes/fs/pulls https://github.com/Raynes/fs/pulls

metadat 3y ago
Bram Moolenaar's passing became public last Saturday: Bram Moolenaar has died - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37011324 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37011324 (4272 points, 430 comments)
deltarholamda 3y ago
There is another thread on HN about vim development going forward, posted on the Google Group for vim development. Christian Brabandt mentions several issues that will need to be resolved, e.g. the hosting situation for the site. I feel that this would be an ideal thing for one of the various open source foundations to address. I.e., provide a single-source hosting environment for open source projects without needing to lean on for-profit corporations, which would include some form of hit-by-a-bus solution for those projects that lose a core (or sole) developer. Trying to piece this stuff together after the fact is always a chore. And no amount of "well, they should have a plan in place" will help. People don't think they're going to die tomorrow, so there's always a reason to put it off for later, so they do. I don't think anybody's worried about Linux going poof if Linus unexpectantly returns to his home planet, but there are plenty of projects that might have some issues. Having all of the domains, DNS, hosting, etc. somewhere with a real employee that can be contacted to move control to new people if required is a good thing.

bilekas 3y ago

So often we hear after someone dies how great they really where when infact they were like most people, a mixed bag. We all have ups and downs etc. There are some though that really do live up to the postmortem messages and for sure Bram is one of them, i was lucky to meet him and actually spend some time shooting shit with him. At the time i didn't realize how big a deal he was, it was only later i would actually get to know and appreciate VIM, but from all of that it made me appreciate him a lot more. So when I read these kind of posts i can't help feel sad of course but I do get shivers of how damn ossum he really was. The testimonials to him hit so hard knowing they're 100% genuine. We need more like him, he will be really missed.

topher200 3y ago
I occasionally ponder on how frustrating it is that the deceased don't get to hear their eulogies. It would have been amazing for Bram to have been able to experience all the outpouring of support and love from people he is interacted with during his life. Especially in a context where the speakers aren't considering him as an audience -- they're sharing their deep and true feelings. No one can really be sure how their acquaintances feel about them. Eulogies are the closest we get. Imagine if he were able to hear all these great things said about him... It would be such a joy.
- beachy 3y ago
  Off topic but your comment makes me think of Nick Drake. He died at 26, before even knowing he'd achieved anything, his music barely listened to, probably feeling a failure. Posthumously he's one of the world's most acclaimed recording artists. RIP Bram.
  - block_dagger 3y ago
    Good example, although Van Gogh is probably the more cited.
    - mongol 3y ago

ansible 3y ago

Thanks Bram. I've been using Vim (and sometimes more recently Neovim) for over 30 years (nearly every work day of my entire career), having used `vi` on various BSD systems in school. In all that time, I've never been on the mailing list for Vim, asked a question or submitted a bug report. I've never needed to do so. Because I've never run into a bug or had a question that couldn't be answered by the built in documentation. A quality software project, lead by a quality man. You've been an inspiration.

dkga 3y ago
[flagged]
jayknight 3y ago
It was 25 years ago this fall that I got a job in the IT department of my university and my boss gave me the perl and vi O'Reilly books so I could start programming on the unix servers. Like you, I've used it (and vim) every day of my career since then.
nemo8551 3y ago
I have to agree here, I’ve worked on some tremendously complex control systems and the documentation has been so good that anytime I’ve needed info it was easy to find. I’ve also worked on relatively simple systems that have required more interrogation due to a lack of, or in one case absolutely terrible documentation.

RetroTechie 3y ago

Thought a linked article: https://j11g.com/2023/08/07/the-legacy-of-bram-moolenaar/ https://j11g.com/2023/08/07/the-legacy-of-bram-moolenaar/ By Jan van den Berg, was a better read. One quote: "Vim is a masterpiece, the gleaming precise machining tool from which so much of modernity was crafted". And then this link: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=eX9m3g5J-XA https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=eX9m3g5J-XA "7 Habits for Effective Text Editing 2.0" 1h20m - If anyone has a transcript or summary: plz. But this was funny - first comment: "I let auto play go on while I was sleeping for 7 hours and went from Billie Eilish to this" Life is weird but I love it :-) Disclaimer: I'm not even user of either (Neo)vim or Emacs. As soon as I read "programmable", I'm off. I just prefer fixed-function editor that suits my taste , a few minutes of configuration & go. But that's just me, what do I know? That said: good tools serve a purpose. Our world is a better place with good tools in it - and the ppl who made those tools. And sometimes their legacy, their philosophy, their way of doing things, lives on in the code (or the community!) they left behind. So kudoz to Bram!

RGBCube 3y ago
> Disclaimer: I'm not even user of either of (Neo)vim or Emacs. As soon as I read "programmable", I'm off. I just prefer fixed-function editor that suits my taste , a few minutes of configuration & go. But that's just me, what do I know? Then Helix may be for you! It uses the Kakoune keybinds, which make SO MUCH SENSE compared to Vim or Emacs. And it's already pre configured and includes a lot of useful features. I have been daily driving it and it's pretty fast and good. Since it automatically uses LSPs if they are in the PATH, it requires very minimal configuration, my configuration only includes theme and some stylistic changes, you can take a look at it if you'd like: https://github.com/RGBCube/NixOSConfiguration/blob/master/machines/asus/helix/default.nix https://github.com/RGBCube/NixOSConfiguration/blob/master/ma...
- __MatrixMan__ 3y ago
  I've been a happy vimmer for 15 years. I've been dabbling in helix for a month and liking it a lot. The ast-aware selection capabilities--while not habit yet--feel like a fledgling superpower.

aprao 3y ago

I reflected on my Vim journey after Bram passed away. It has been my only constant professional companion in the past 10 years - from university projects to FAANGs to everything-on-fire startups. All professional work I have done - the ones I am proud of, the ones that I am ashamed of, the ones that got me promotions and the ones that resulted in $M SEVs - was done on Vim. Oses/DBs/PLs/companies/co-workers come and go, but Vim has been forever. Thanks Bram.

Dulat_Akan 3y ago

keep going bro good post

vjust 3y ago

thanks Bram.

parentheses 3y ago

Aside from the POSIX toolchain/kernel/etc and browser (which I'd use if it neatly embedded into vim), vim and its siblings are together the most used program on my machine. It's only today that I am forced to think about this: One person drove that program from an idea in their head to a high-quality, hackable program that I've fallen in love with over the years! A program that I have used for so many hours, but has never crashed once (neovim does crash, but vim has never done this for me.) This is an impressive feat given the sheer volume of vim plugins and configurations I've gone through! Thank you Bram! You built an amazing program and the community around it!

gitaarik 3y ago

Today at a train station in the Netherlands (Utrecht) I noticed something special. I saw the letters hjkl on the sign in reverse order. These letters indentify the platform areas where you can enter the train. Depending on the length of the platform and the area where the train has entrances, it shows the letters. https://postimg.cc/mcCWhMXw https://postimg.cc/mcCWhMXw Either this was super coincidence, or someone at the NS (the Dutch train company) is a vim fan and payed tribute to Bram like this.

gitaarik 3y ago
Although, thinking about it now, the letters do come after each other in the alpbabeth except that the I is missing between the H and J, but maybe they did that intentionally because it can be confused with the lower case L. So maybe just coincidence after all, but still it was special for me. I never saw this at the trains and now suddenly the week after Bram passed away this shows up.
- Affric 3y ago
  Regardless it’s touching that it made you think of Bram
- mkl 3y ago
  The partially alphabetic middle row of QWERTY is a remnant of an alphabetic layout that preceded it. QWERTY reduced typewriter jamming by moving common consecutive letters away from each other.
zabzonk 3y ago
not a coincedence or tribute - same has been the same in the uk for many years. the letter "i" is typically not used for such purposes because it can so easily be confused with numeric "1" or alpha "l".
- tremon 3y ago
  Pretty sure it's a tribute -- local trains in NL do not have named carriages FAFAIK, because there's no reserved seating. Only international trains have those indicators, and they do not go to Den Helder.

zgluck 3y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benevolent_dictator_for_life https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benevolent_dictator_for_life has a list of BDFLs. Bram is the first BDFL in that list who has passed away. We're in for a generational shift the coming decade(s). It makes sense to prepare - that is how you preserve a legacy, and the community. I've been impressed with how Bram's passing has been handled by his family and friends with respect to his legacy and the future of vim.

zgluck 3y ago
So the result of me writing this was that John Gruber was added as the BDFL of Markdown. Creator, sure, BDFL, that's a stretch.

chaps 3y ago

Vim has had a legitimate impact on my life. Over the past 15 years I've been using it, "set -o vi" and similar in psql/ipython get added into my rc files almost immediately on a new host. Many, many hours upon hours of living in a shell have been made so much more enjoyable because of his work. Thank you for posting this. Rest in peace, friend.

imiric 3y ago
Same here. Learning Vim commands has had one of the greatest ROI of anything I know. It's been invaluable over the years, and has probably saved me hundreds of hours of interacting with a computer. It's become muscle memory a long time ago, and editing text and moving a cursor on the screen takes no effort at all. It's one of those things I always suggest to new programmers. Learning Vim may arguably have a steep learning curve, but it will open your eyes to a different and more efficient way of interacting with text, which is something you constantly do as a programmer. I've enabled Vi(m) mode everywhere it's supported: from shells and everything that uses Readline, to making it the default in Emacs via evil-mode. The modal interface and mnemonic commands that can be combined in different ways is a far superior and more intuitive UI than the Emacs key chord UI. I love Vim. It's what got me started on this journey 20+ years ago. I still use it daily for quick edits, but prefer Emacs as an IDE, as it's a more extensible environment. With evil-mode, I get the best of both worlds. :) Bram has improved so many of our lives, and deserves to be recognized among the all time greats in our industry. RIP.

29athrowaway 3y ago

Bram is a guy who could have chosen to make millions but instead helped millions.

emerongi 3y ago

Vim has soul. It is that chisel you inherited from your grandpa that you keep using. It fits well in your grip and is comfortable, even though it lacks the soft rubber that the new ones in the store have. It's a tool with its own history. Reading the comments here, it seems that the hacker's mentality still lives on. The new young billion-dollar company will be replaced in another 10-20 years. Vim lives on. I wish to build a Vim of my own one day.

keepamovin 3y ago
That’s a great way to put it. Who are you?
pavlov 3y ago
A slight difference though. If a newbie picks up grandpa's chisel, it doesn't get glued onto their hand until they google the three magic words they must shout to make the chisel come off.
- gpmcadam 3y ago
  I understand your metaphor but I think it's probably a stretch. Maybe it's better to say the tool has sharp edges that if you aren't familiar with it, can bite you. But with a bit of practise and some knowledge you can master it.
  - pavlov 3y ago
    It's not a stretch that practically everybody who accidentally ends up in vim (often because it's git's default editor) ends up googling how to exit the program. It's the tool that you can't even drop by any intuitive action.
    - tough 3y ago
      Closing the terminal app is pretty intuitive to me. Restart your computer if all else fails

beefsack 3y ago

I thought this was quite well written. "Be pragmatic, not dogmatic" is a very sensible rule of thumb.

izolate 3y ago

In a world of fleeting software, Vim is a timeless masterpiece. I only wish I had the opportunity to thank Bram for the impact he's had on my life and career, because I don't think I would have come as far without Vim.

grozmovoi 3y ago
I think this is one of the main important things about vim. The longer it exists , the longer it will. It has outlived so many modern text editors. I hope that it lives on as long as I live and longer.

1-2-3-5-8 3y ago

Thank you Bram for everything. Your talk, 7 Habits For Effective Text Editing 2.0 inspired me and it started my Vim journey. Using Vim all these years has been a complete joy. You will not be forgotten. Link to the talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p6K4iIMlouI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p6K4iIMlouI

trymas 3y ago

From a linked article [0] there's a screenshot of Bram's github activity and this text: > Sad > Perhaps all these things add up to why it hit me when I read the news that Bram had passed away. In the message, his family made it clear that Bram was ill (‘a medical condition that progressed quickly over the last few weeks‘). This was unknown to most people and made the news all the more surprising. > And it made me even sadder when someone pointed out Bram’s recent GitHub activity. https://github.com/brammool https://github.com/brammool [0] https://j11g.com/2023/08/07/the-legacy-of-bram-moolenaar/ https://j11g.com/2023/08/07/the-legacy-of-bram-moolenaar/ EDIT: From BDFL list in Wikipedia Bram seems to be the first to be marked as †. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benevolent_dictator_for_life https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benevolent_dictator_for_life

im_coder 3y ago

Thanks Bram, RIP .

sremani 3y ago

I sucked at Vim. My tribute to Bram will be to learn it and master it. It is one shoulders of these giants we ALL stand on.

AltruisticGapHN 3y ago

Is there anything like MacVim on linux these days? I mean gVIM is pretty usable with tabs but I'm wondering if anybody cared enough to make something a little fancier GUI wise? Just good looking slick window decorations, better integrated with eg. GNOME in Ubuntu. More crucially has anybody ever made a faster render? I mean it´s 2023 and I'm still seeing gvim in Ubuntu redraw my tabs from top to bottom in maybe 0.1 sec but it's definitely noticeable.

gsinclair 3y ago

I really appreciated this post. Bram was a hero for his long term dedication to such a great piece of software, and for the great design he put into it that made so many people’s lives better. Justin and the other Neovim developers are heroes for making a great piece of software even greater. Despite all the drama that people like to confect, the Neovim devs always show the proper respect to Vim and Bram.