"It isn't really Vim's 20th birthday. It's a lot closer to its 35th!" Because of course, vim is really just an extended and improved version of the venerable vi, the first screen-oriented editor for Unix.
While the article starts out with a history of vi, it somehow treats it as if it were a grandparent, rather than the template for what remains. The core design of vim reflects the design insights of Bill Joy, not those of Bram Moolenaar, who refined and updated them."
Well, I like this counterpoint too from the Google+ discussion:
"Sedat Kapanoglu: Technical innovation process on computing is too organic to find a single originator. Everything is derived from something else and that's what computing industry owes it's amazing progress in such a short term. Unix was from Multics. C was from B which was from BCPL. , and vi was from ex. We can consider vi itself as vim for ex from that perspective. I think there are no distinct thought processes for creating and improving. All creation is improvement and all improvement is a creation. We don't need to have a moment of silence for the father on a kid's birthday. Let the kid enjoy the day."
I had almost forgotten that Bill Joy, the creator of vi is also the co-founder of Sun; and Gosling, the father of Java authored his own version of Emacs.
Isn't it ironic that most people find Java, one of the major accomplishments of Sun, is almost impossible to code in vim or emacs without an IDE though?
Vim has the kind of user lock-in mechanism that big corporations can only dream of: modal editing.
Once you get sold on modal text editing it becomes very difficult to accept or use any other editor that doesn't do it (which is pretty much every other text editor out there). Sublime, Textmate, e - all great editors. Don't feel like using any of them after 10 years of Vim.
Another vim user and I were discussing this and I came up with the nutty idea of creating a 'vimspec' that detailed the basic features and extensibility a 'vim-mode' plugin in another environment would need to have to be useful to regular vim users.
I think most people developing 'vim-mode' plugins for other environments aren't necessarily vim power users so won't be aware of how natural normal mode is to regular vimmers (and importantly, what features you will miss).
Some sort of vim standard for normal mode might go a way towards making normal mode with its commands a more ubiquitous interface for editing text.
Bah.. stagnation is not worthy of being called life.
I love vim because it is the best. I can't use anything else because nothing else works like it.
I hate vim because it has stopped advancing. It has not had a good update for 5 years.
May 7, 2006 7.0 Spell checking, code completion, tab pages (multiple viewports/window layouts), current line and column highlighting, undo branches, and more
May 12, 2007 7.1 Bug fixes, new syntax and runtime files, etc.
August 9, 2008 7.2 Floating point support in scripts, refactored screen drawing code, bug fixes, new syntax files, etc.
We are all still waiting for various types of extensibility, even though they been in the top 5 sponsored requests for over almost 15 years. I normally wouldn't be complaining about free software, but vim is donationware.
> I hate vim because it has stopped advancing. It has not had a good update for 5 years.
Vim itself has stopped advancing, but there is an active community developing very useful and novel plugins. This has happened thanks to several plugin management systems that have arisen independently during the last couple of years.
If you appreciate Vim and use it every day, make a donation to http://iccf-holland.org/ - for many of us, Vim is an indispensable tool, if we all paid ICCF what we properly owe Bram for his years of Vim work, it would make a huge difference to people who really need it.
As someone more than twice that old, I find it amusing when something twenty years old is described as "venerable." The world of computer technology has seen many fashions come and go, but some tools have been comparatively long-lasting, and have been used through several generations of the newest and greatest other technologies.
So very few, though. Many standards have lasted that long (deflate compression immediately came to mind), but few specific tools have. The Linux kernel turned 20 recently. X has lasted 27 years, and remained backward-compatible (X11) for 24 years. GCC (24 years), Vim (20), and Emacs (35) have grown ever-more widely used. How many other specific tools that we use today have that kind of history?
Despite its age, I still find myself discovering new useful functionality. Reading this article, I noticed that the screenshot had a shell running in a buffer, which vim doesn't normally do. I searched for the text in the status line, and found ConqueTerm.
[+] [-] toyg|14 years ago|reply
"It isn't really Vim's 20th birthday. It's a lot closer to its 35th!" Because of course, vim is really just an extended and improved version of the venerable vi, the first screen-oriented editor for Unix.
While the article starts out with a history of vi, it somehow treats it as if it were a grandparent, rather than the template for what remains. The core design of vim reflects the design insights of Bill Joy, not those of Bram Moolenaar, who refined and updated them."
[+] [-] St-Clock|14 years ago|reply
"Sedat Kapanoglu: Technical innovation process on computing is too organic to find a single originator. Everything is derived from something else and that's what computing industry owes it's amazing progress in such a short term. Unix was from Multics. C was from B which was from BCPL. , and vi was from ex. We can consider vi itself as vim for ex from that perspective. I think there are no distinct thought processes for creating and improving. All creation is improvement and all improvement is a creation. We don't need to have a moment of silence for the father on a kid's birthday. Let the kid enjoy the day."
[+] [-] ludwigvan|14 years ago|reply
Isn't it ironic that most people find Java, one of the major accomplishments of Sun, is almost impossible to code in vim or emacs without an IDE though?
[+] [-] statictype|14 years ago|reply
Once you get sold on modal text editing it becomes very difficult to accept or use any other editor that doesn't do it (which is pretty much every other text editor out there). Sublime, Textmate, e - all great editors. Don't feel like using any of them after 10 years of Vim.
[+] [-] alinajaf|14 years ago|reply
I think most people developing 'vim-mode' plugins for other environments aren't necessarily vim power users so won't be aware of how natural normal mode is to regular vimmers (and importantly, what features you will miss).
Some sort of vim standard for normal mode might go a way towards making normal mode with its commands a more ubiquitous interface for editing text.
[+] [-] michaelty|14 years ago|reply
I find it great for focusing on the power that M-X brings.
[+] [-] m0shen|14 years ago|reply
Your plugins, macros and settings though... it's tough to have those follow you around.
[+] [-] tricolon|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dddddannyyyyy|14 years ago|reply
I love vim because it is the best. I can't use anything else because nothing else works like it.
I hate vim because it has stopped advancing. It has not had a good update for 5 years.
May 7, 2006 7.0 Spell checking, code completion, tab pages (multiple viewports/window layouts), current line and column highlighting, undo branches, and more
May 12, 2007 7.1 Bug fixes, new syntax and runtime files, etc.
August 9, 2008 7.2 Floating point support in scripts, refactored screen drawing code, bug fixes, new syntax files, etc.
August 15, 2010 7.3 Lua support, Python3 support, Blowfish encryption, persistent undo/redo
We are all still waiting for various types of extensibility, even though they been in the top 5 sponsored requests for over almost 15 years. I normally wouldn't be complaining about free software, but vim is donationware.
[+] [-] rbonvall|14 years ago|reply
Vim itself has stopped advancing, but there is an active community developing very useful and novel plugins. This has happened thanks to several plugin management systems that have arisen independently during the last couple of years.
[+] [-] xpaulbettsx|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] masomenos|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jamesbritt|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tokenadult|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] JoshTriplett|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] JoshTriplett|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] alexis-d|14 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] wazoox|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ojbyrne|14 years ago|reply
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