When I was first getting started in software I was very much part of the "I can think faster than I type" school and I had the good fortune to fall in with some really serious hackers, one of whom was an absolute wizard with `vim`.
He was a very humble guy, so it was some time before I learned he was in no small part such a `vi` pro because he had written a real vi, it was called `xvi` and I gather that it was around the time that `vim` was taking off.
I asked him why he used `vim` if he had written `xvi` and I'll never forget his reply: "Writing a `vi` is something any programmer can do if they put the effort in, writing a `vi` as good as `vim` is something only people like Bram can do. Obviously I'm going to use the better tool."
Bram changed the lives and careers of so many of us, myself included. I never interacted with him personally but from everything I've ever seen he was humble, brilliant, helpful, and took his craft as seriously as anyone I've ever heard of.
It's weird, his last message was in December 2022:
"""
Happy New Year to all Vim users!
I have updated the handy desktop calendar for 2023. It prints on one
sheet of paper and, after folding and applying a bit of glue, stands on
your desk.
> Bram changed the lives and careers of so many of us
True.
> [...] he was humble, brilliant, helpful, and took his craft as seriously as anyone I've ever heard of
I start to think that this is not a coincidence. These excellent people, the "brilliant, but humble" ones are the ones that changed my (and possibly others') lives and careers.
Mr Moolenaar, many other FOSS devs (maintainers), university professors (I'm sure I'm not the only lucky one who experienced this), all the real silent "rock stars".
I evaluated a bunch of vi clones in around 1994 and went with Vim. Xvi was one of them, as well as Elvis and some others. Already, Vim was a cut above the rest with some nice features.
Personal anecdote:
I had lived and worked in southern Uganda with a Canadian organization called Kibaale Children’s Fund (now Kuwasha). One day Bram came by our location. We talked a bit - someone told me he was influential and “worked for google or something” and then I learned his real identity and the software he was a part of. I was just on the brink of beginning a career in IT at the time and later in life as my skills and toolset grew I realized his significance. He never spoke of VIM in person during our time and was an incredibly humble quiet man, dedicating his time to helping children in need through ICCF Holland, which operated out of the same school I was working with as I recall. I found Bram incredibly genuine, and was also highly impressed with the ethics he brought to his efforts in the local work in Uganda (where it is typical to see fundraising dollars sliced and diced with admin-fees - ICCF turned every cent of a dollar back into the community.) He will be missed by many in that part of the world for such a massive impact he was able to have through funds raised through VIM. May he rest in peace.
Went to his website.
There was an interview of him from 2022.
The answer that really stroke me was not about Vim, but about software craftmanship vs professional programming:
« I have been working for a company where quite a few managers, educated in physics and mechanics, thought the software was just the same as what they knew and they could decide how to make it. That company went downhill and was eventually taken over. The same happens in places where decision-makers can get away with failure, such as in government. The people writing the code probably just make sure they get paid and then run away from the crime scene. On the other end of the scale are people who want to write beautiful code, spend lots of time on it, and don’t care if it actually does what it was intended to do or what the budget was. Somewhere in between, there is a balance. »
I am not so sure about the last sentence. But the rest is SO true!
> people who want to write beautiful code, spend lots of time on it, and don’t care if it actually does what it was intended to do
There was a funny React framework a while back that has all kinds of cool state management and this and that, but it renders nothing. For the developers who spend more time theorizing, migrating, refactoring, than shipping.
It's funny when people go back and forth about the time complexity of a click handler (that is debounced anyway), and they arrive at the optimal solution, but when you use the app the entire thing is super clunky lol where is the concern for time complexity of me using the product xD
I'm pretty sure that company was Océ, I worked there at the same time Bram was there (although I don't think I ever met him).
They were a photocopier company that struggled with technology in general, not just software. I suspect the root of their problem was that they had been taken over by sales and marketing people. That's never good for a technology company.
> On the other end of the scale are people who want to write beautiful code, spend lots of time on it, and don’t care if it actually does what it was intended to do or what the budget was. Somewhere in between, there is a balance.
I've worked with enough "professional" programmers to know I don't want to work with them and their sloppy, reckless, uncurious, and inconsiderate ways.
The last sentence was the point. Either end of the spectrum are people who are not caring about the right things (typically about themselves, egos, etc).
As a long time Vim user I’m extremely thankful for Bram’s creation and stewardship of an incredible piece of software. He gave the world an amazing gift.
I’ve interacted with Bram a few times personally in the process of submitting changes to Vim, and I’ve observed many more interactions with others. I always had an immense amount of respect for the way he led the Vim project and interacted with the community. It is not uncommon to see open source software maintainers become burnt out or frustrated, particularly with a piece of software as quirky and complicated as Vim. But Bram was almost always respectful and patient with users and contributors, even when they were not.
This is a loss for the software world. Bram, you will be missed.
I had an opportunity to talk to the Bram Moolenaar when VimConf 2018 was held in Japan. First and only time Bram visited Japan.
I was there as a volunteer staff, sitting at a reception desk. Although vim is the text editor I use everyday, I'm not that enthusiastic to participate the vim conference. I'm not a vim developer. I don't use some of the advanced vim features. I don't ask much for a text editor. I use vim simply because it's available in all environments I could possibly use. I was a volunteer staff because I was asked by one of my colleague at that time who was a serious vim user and organized the VimConf.
So I didn't have a plan to talk to Bram at all. There were so many Japanese vim developers and serious vim users there who want to talk to Bram. This may be the first and last chance to talk to Bram in person for them. I don't want to waste the precious time for them.
Then, I learned at the conference that recent vim release includes termdebug plugin which allows vim to behave as a gdb frontend. Since I am a C++ programmer, I started playing with it. Then, I quickly found a bug. termdebug assume there's only one function for a name and couldn't handle C++ function overloading.
I discussed this issue with Bram Moolenaar in a spare time.
There aren't many other things I can tell about Bram.
At the after party of VimConf 2018, Bram absolutely refused to use a cup and drink beer directly from a beer bottle. It wasn't a small 333 ml beer bottle. It was a big 633 ml beer bottle.
Before the VimConf 2018, Bram went to climb Mt. Fuji during his stay in Japan.
I am such a huge fan of Vim that I ran a Vim blog and posted daily tips for several years (will not mention it by name because I do not want to self-promote in this thread). I don't have much to say besides the fact that I feel like we've lost a "giant" in the open source world, and Bram's contributions as a software engineer, and more importantly, a fantastic human being, will not be forgotten. :help uganda
Few people could probably argue that they helped as many humans in dire situations like Bram did in his life. Vim was the first time I came across "charityware" as vim encourages users to donate to International Child Care Fund Holland on its splash screen, instead of begging for money for itself. I feel a bit of shame when I say that I've only donated to ICCF once over all these years....
As a remembrance of Bram and to thank him for building the editor I've been using for as long as I can remember, I'm doing exactly what he would have wanted me to do, donating to ICCF Holland. If you're a vim/nvim/other edition user, I suggest you to do the same: https://iccf-holland.org/donate.html
If you're a (neo)vim user, there is more information at `:help iccf` as well.
Thank you Bram for everything. I'm sure your spirit and lines written will stay with me and others for a very long time in the future.
Bram had been spending over 30 years on Vim; and not just "the occasional patch/bugfix", but significant amounts, and almost every single day for some years.
The number of people who spent that much time working on Open Source is very small, and the number of people who have spent that much time purely in their spare time is smaller still. In fact, I don't really know of anyone who even comes close to Bram.
The number of people who spent this much time volunteering for anything is very small.
Bram's effort on Vim was phenomenal and exceptional by any standard.
---
I only met Bram in person once, in 2014, when he talked about Zimbu[1]; at some point I must have given a bit of a skeptical look, and he promptly looked at me and asked "oh, you don't agree? Why not?" It was a nice talk with lots of "audience engagement" like this. We spent some time talking during the rest of the day and the next day; we discussed and joked about lots of things; I don't recall talking much about Vim: it just didn't come up. I found him a very friendly, warm, and likeable person.
Sven Guckes (who passed away last year) did organize a little "Ask Me Anything" type workshop with Bram, and I discovered Bram struggled remembering the ins-and-outs of some of the lesser used Vim features just as much as the rest of us :-)
I wrote on twitter that vim is a masterpiece. It's the gleaming precise machine tool on which so much of modernity was crafted. It's so hard to quantify Bram's impact, because he did so much through so powerful a force multiplier.
I started as a Unix sysadmin 25 years ago and kept gravitating towards vim. One practical reason is because it paid off to be familiar with vi, which is nearly always still available on just-installed or bare-bones systems. But another is how welcoming and leveling the Vim community was. It was so easy to get great macros and tips, and everyone was just super friendly about it. I remember someone in #vim irc teaching me "gqap" to wrap a paragraph, and they very naturally took the time to explain how it all worked. There was no sneering on from the community. I think Bram's empathy and leadership was a huge part of that attitude in the community.
I'm a regular annual donor on Vim's behalf, and this morning donated another €250 in Bram's memory. People should only donate what they can afford, we all have different means, but I'd encourage folks to work out what a great commercial editor or IDE would have cost them in licensing over their use time, and to consider donating in proportion.
Few contribute so meaningfully to the world through software as Bram did. I donated an amount as if I were purchasing vim as an expensive commercial text editor.
For most death announcements on HN, I have to look up who they were. Not this one. I greatly appreciate his work and contributions to the world.
For everyone reading this who has ever adored vim, or any of the editors that would go on to be inspired by vim, I can think of no better tribute to Bram than to make a donation to the charity that he spent the better part of his life advocating for.
The news made me unexpectedly said. There are not many people that felt so close without ever knowing them, just because I used their software. Thank you for the reminder to donate: the least thing one can do now. I think most of the digital stuff I ever produced in my life was using vim. Software, scripts, websites, theses, a book, I actually even used a plugin to fill out text boxes in the web using vim.
All the stray 'i's in documents or source code in stuff I had to write with other editors give evidence to my dedication. Thank you Bram! May you live forever in vim.
> "I'm doing exactly what he would have wanted me to do, donating to ICCF Holland. If you're a vim/nvim/other edition user, I suggest you to do the same: https://iccf-holland.org/donate.html ."
I met Bram once, at an open source fair at Google’s Zürich office. At the fair everybody could show off their projects. There was one person who had built some kind of AST editor/IDE, where the unit of editing was not the file, but functions floating around in a workspace. He was showing this to Bram, but I don’t think he realized who he was talking to. When he asked “so, what do you think?”, Bram answered “Hmm yeah, I’m more of a vi-type of person.”
> Anyone who's used Vim has seen evidence of Moolenaar's generosity. "Vim is Charityware," Moolenaar wrotes in its pioneering license. "You can use and copy it as much as you like, but you are encouraged to make a donation for needy children in Uganda." Moolenaar pioneered the concept of charityware decades ago, and also helped to popularize its adoption.
Pioneered one of the most iconic pieces of software in history, and yet did not make a single dime from it. That is truly something to look up to.
When I first entered this field in the 80s, there was a rivalry between vi users (as I was) and emacs users. There was so much about emacs that I couldn't stand, but I'll admit to quite a bit of envy as well.
Then, some time around 94 or so, I became aware of this vi clone called vim. My emacs envy could finally be put to rest because this vim could either do (or had on the roadmap to do) everything I had envied from looking over emacs users' shoulders! I became a rabid user and evangelist, immediately downloading each new version, reporting (and occasionally fixing) bugs. For a while when I was working at Sun in the late 90s, Bram and I had an ongoing email dialog.
My career path has never really allowed me to significantly work on open source, so I never really made the transition to a major contributor. Many years ago, vim hit peak feature set for me, so I didn't really need to track its development - the version bundled on my work desktop would always suffice and I'd download a new version at home whenever I changed out my home Windows PC. Other than that, I lost track of the community.
When I came to Google, I was tickled to find out that Bram worked here, though I never reached out to him personally. Before I knew it, he had retired, and I lost that chance.
For over 25 years, I have only ever used vim as my editor - at home or at work. It is the most dependable tool in my box, traveling with me through multiple employers and programming languages.
Wow that hits rather hard actually. I never knew him other than through the welcome message on Vim, but he made one of the tools I rely on the most in my daily life.
A lot of this advice is about turning vim into a "modern" text editor with a language server configured.
I used to use vim but lately I switched to Helix, which is basically vim but with all the good features and plugins built into it and without a configuration/extension language. Almost all of the features are easily discoverable by just pressing spacebar, and the rest by browsing the (small) documentation, and I can think of a way to do all the things Bram talks about from within Helix, often better (because it's relying on the language server).
Still, the main point about learning your tools by detecting inefficiencies and searching for a better way is always valid, and I'm sure that all these things Vim was already doing at the time helped pave the way for modern editors. RIP.
Now this is a bit random but many years ago I run into a Dutch couple running some kind of wildlife farm in Ghana. When they found out I was geekish they said a relative of theirs was big in the open source world. Turned out to be Bram.
I can't quite remember what the relationship was but since then every time I use vim (not often admittedly ) I think of this Dutch woman looking after a jumble of wild animals in the middle of nowhere...
Bram defined the interface I've used to express myself in so many ways since my early teens. His contributions to software development reach far beyond the $EDITOR and pervasive interaction patterns we're all so familiar with.
Thoughts are with his friends and family right now. Rest in peace, Mr. Moolenaar.
Really sad to hear this... My first donation as a late teen to free software, was to the ICCF Uganda, thanks to vim's charityware license. It was maybe around 1997 or 98. Later versions of vim used a formal free software license, but still off-band encouraging donations to the ICCF. I've always been a bit skeptical to the whole concept of charity, but I respected Bram Moolenaar so much due to his work on vim that I trusted his judgement. I kept donating to the ICCF for a few years until he was hired at google.
I was also deeply honored to see my (tiny, insignificant) minority language on his page for the word Mooleenar in many languages [0].
As a matter of respect and to honour his memory, I will keep using the last version of vim (by his last commit [1]) as my main text editor for as long as humanly feasible.
There is a collection of people and cultural artifacts that are contemporary to us, though usually not our exact age. They pass away, one at a time, until we are all that is left of the world we once defined, a world that eventually is gone.
Bram’s passing is another chip at the passing of the world I knew, where vim was new.
Thank you Bram for your excellent and enviable contribution to computing.
"It appears you think that everybody is like you. But that's not so."
I didn't take the advice well at the time, but now, a little older and wiser, I understand.
Thank you, Bram. Thank you for vim, for your time and dedication, and for taking the time to deposit a small amount of your wisdom into my brain. Sorry for being a dick.
In 2000 we organized a large outdoor LAN party for a week in the middle of nowhere hosting around 600 Unix/Linux aficionados. I was very proud to have found Bram to speak there at our event. On the days ahead I became very anxious to welcome this paragon of open source contributors, but I soon found out Bram was one of the most fun and caring people I had the honour to meet. Not just did he tell us his story of developing vim, he also organised an in promptu quiz on Unix and networking. I have fond memories of Bram and am truly sad to hear he passed away. Bram truly captured the soul of open source.
[+] [-] benreesman|2 years ago|reply
When I was first getting started in software I was very much part of the "I can think faster than I type" school and I had the good fortune to fall in with some really serious hackers, one of whom was an absolute wizard with `vim`.
He was a very humble guy, so it was some time before I learned he was in no small part such a `vi` pro because he had written a real vi, it was called `xvi` and I gather that it was around the time that `vim` was taking off.
I asked him why he used `vim` if he had written `xvi` and I'll never forget his reply: "Writing a `vi` is something any programmer can do if they put the effort in, writing a `vi` as good as `vim` is something only people like Bram can do. Obviously I'm going to use the better tool."
Bram changed the lives and careers of so many of us, myself included. I never interacted with him personally but from everything I've ever seen he was humble, brilliant, helpful, and took his craft as seriously as anyone I've ever heard of.
RIP Legend.
[+] [-] behnamoh|2 years ago|reply
""" Happy New Year to all Vim users!
I have updated the handy desktop calendar for 2023. It prints on one sheet of paper and, after folding and applying a bit of glue, stands on your desk.
It is available in English and Dutch. You can find the PDF files on my website: https://moolenaar.net/#Calendar
Happy Vimming!
-- No man may purchase alcohol without written consent from his wife. [real standing law in Pennsylvania, United States of America] """
RIP Bram. Rest assured that us Vim users will be happy Vimming while being sad that you are gone.
[+] [-] kmarc|2 years ago|reply
True.
> [...] he was humble, brilliant, helpful, and took his craft as seriously as anyone I've ever heard of
I start to think that this is not a coincidence. These excellent people, the "brilliant, but humble" ones are the ones that changed my (and possibly others') lives and careers.
Mr Moolenaar, many other FOSS devs (maintainers), university professors (I'm sure I'm not the only lucky one who experienced this), all the real silent "rock stars".
[+] [-] thewakalix|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kazinator|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] uean|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lolive|2 years ago|reply
« I have been working for a company where quite a few managers, educated in physics and mechanics, thought the software was just the same as what they knew and they could decide how to make it. That company went downhill and was eventually taken over. The same happens in places where decision-makers can get away with failure, such as in government. The people writing the code probably just make sure they get paid and then run away from the crime scene. On the other end of the scale are people who want to write beautiful code, spend lots of time on it, and don’t care if it actually does what it was intended to do or what the budget was. Somewhere in between, there is a balance. »
I am not so sure about the last sentence. But the rest is SO true!
[+] [-] bennyschmidt|2 years ago|reply
There was a funny React framework a while back that has all kinds of cool state management and this and that, but it renders nothing. For the developers who spend more time theorizing, migrating, refactoring, than shipping.
It's funny when people go back and forth about the time complexity of a click handler (that is debounced anyway), and they arrive at the optimal solution, but when you use the app the entire thing is super clunky lol where is the concern for time complexity of me using the product xD
[+] [-] tonyedgecombe|2 years ago|reply
They were a photocopier company that struggled with technology in general, not just software. I suspect the root of their problem was that they had been taken over by sales and marketing people. That's never good for a technology company.
[+] [-] cxr|2 years ago|reply
For ease of consumption, the context again:
> On the other end of the scale are people who want to write beautiful code, spend lots of time on it, and don’t care if it actually does what it was intended to do or what the budget was. Somewhere in between, there is a balance.
[+] [-] WalterBright|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 1letterunixname|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ugh123|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|2 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] gpanders|2 years ago|reply
I’ve interacted with Bram a few times personally in the process of submitting changes to Vim, and I’ve observed many more interactions with others. I always had an immense amount of respect for the way he led the Vim project and interacted with the community. It is not uncommon to see open source software maintainers become burnt out or frustrated, particularly with a piece of software as quirky and complicated as Vim. But Bram was almost always respectful and patient with users and contributors, even when they were not.
This is a loss for the software world. Bram, you will be missed.
[+] [-] l00sed|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ezoe|2 years ago|reply
I was there as a volunteer staff, sitting at a reception desk. Although vim is the text editor I use everyday, I'm not that enthusiastic to participate the vim conference. I'm not a vim developer. I don't use some of the advanced vim features. I don't ask much for a text editor. I use vim simply because it's available in all environments I could possibly use. I was a volunteer staff because I was asked by one of my colleague at that time who was a serious vim user and organized the VimConf.
So I didn't have a plan to talk to Bram at all. There were so many Japanese vim developers and serious vim users there who want to talk to Bram. This may be the first and last chance to talk to Bram in person for them. I don't want to waste the precious time for them.
Then, I learned at the conference that recent vim release includes termdebug plugin which allows vim to behave as a gdb frontend. Since I am a C++ programmer, I started playing with it. Then, I quickly found a bug. termdebug assume there's only one function for a name and couldn't handle C++ function overloading.
I discussed this issue with Bram Moolenaar in a spare time.
There aren't many other things I can tell about Bram.
At the after party of VimConf 2018, Bram absolutely refused to use a cup and drink beer directly from a beer bottle. It wasn't a small 333 ml beer bottle. It was a big 633 ml beer bottle.
Before the VimConf 2018, Bram went to climb Mt. Fuji during his stay in Japan.
[+] [-] capableweb|2 years ago|reply
His website has a lot of other albums he published for everyone to enjoy: https://moolenaar.net/albums.html
[+] [-] tmountain|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] capableweb|2 years ago|reply
As a remembrance of Bram and to thank him for building the editor I've been using for as long as I can remember, I'm doing exactly what he would have wanted me to do, donating to ICCF Holland. If you're a vim/nvim/other edition user, I suggest you to do the same: https://iccf-holland.org/donate.html
If you're a (neo)vim user, there is more information at `:help iccf` as well.
Thank you Bram for everything. I'm sure your spirit and lines written will stay with me and others for a very long time in the future.
[+] [-] arp242|2 years ago|reply
The number of people who spent that much time working on Open Source is very small, and the number of people who have spent that much time purely in their spare time is smaller still. In fact, I don't really know of anyone who even comes close to Bram.
The number of people who spent this much time volunteering for anything is very small.
Bram's effort on Vim was phenomenal and exceptional by any standard.
---
I only met Bram in person once, in 2014, when he talked about Zimbu[1]; at some point I must have given a bit of a skeptical look, and he promptly looked at me and asked "oh, you don't agree? Why not?" It was a nice talk with lots of "audience engagement" like this. We spent some time talking during the rest of the day and the next day; we discussed and joked about lots of things; I don't recall talking much about Vim: it just didn't come up. I found him a very friendly, warm, and likeable person.
Sven Guckes (who passed away last year) did organize a little "Ask Me Anything" type workshop with Bram, and I discovered Bram struggled remembering the ins-and-outs of some of the lesser used Vim features just as much as the rest of us :-)
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_O-QdG2X1Lw)
[+] [-] colmmacc|2 years ago|reply
I started as a Unix sysadmin 25 years ago and kept gravitating towards vim. One practical reason is because it paid off to be familiar with vi, which is nearly always still available on just-installed or bare-bones systems. But another is how welcoming and leveling the Vim community was. It was so easy to get great macros and tips, and everyone was just super friendly about it. I remember someone in #vim irc teaching me "gqap" to wrap a paragraph, and they very naturally took the time to explain how it all worked. There was no sneering on from the community. I think Bram's empathy and leadership was a huge part of that attitude in the community.
I'm a regular annual donor on Vim's behalf, and this morning donated another €250 in Bram's memory. People should only donate what they can afford, we all have different means, but I'd encourage folks to work out what a great commercial editor or IDE would have cost them in licensing over their use time, and to consider donating in proportion.
:wq Bram
[+] [-] justin_oaks|2 years ago|reply
For most death announcements on HN, I have to look up who they were. Not this one. I greatly appreciate his work and contributions to the world.
[+] [-] kibwen|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] riedel|2 years ago|reply
All the stray 'i's in documents or source code in stuff I had to write with other editors give evidence to my dedication. Thank you Bram! May you live forever in vim.
[+] [-] kdheepak|2 years ago|reply
Vim has shaped so many aspects of my professional life; I'll forever be grateful to Bram for his work and contributions. Rest in peace, Bram.
[+] [-] smueller1234|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jodrellblank|2 years ago|reply
In view of https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/7FzD7pNm9X68Gp5ZC/why-our-ki...
I'm calling out that I have donated.
[+] [-] lillesvin|2 years ago|reply
Edit: Hmm... PayPal seems to throw error after error at me when I try to donate. I'll keep trying.
[+] [-] pbourke|2 years ago|reply
Rest in Peace, Bram.
[+] [-] junon|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] diffserv|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vault|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ruuda|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] robertlagrant|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pseudo_meta|2 years ago|reply
Pioneered one of the most iconic pieces of software in history, and yet did not make a single dime from it. That is truly something to look up to.
[+] [-] alarge|2 years ago|reply
Then, some time around 94 or so, I became aware of this vi clone called vim. My emacs envy could finally be put to rest because this vim could either do (or had on the roadmap to do) everything I had envied from looking over emacs users' shoulders! I became a rabid user and evangelist, immediately downloading each new version, reporting (and occasionally fixing) bugs. For a while when I was working at Sun in the late 90s, Bram and I had an ongoing email dialog.
My career path has never really allowed me to significantly work on open source, so I never really made the transition to a major contributor. Many years ago, vim hit peak feature set for me, so I didn't really need to track its development - the version bundled on my work desktop would always suffice and I'd download a new version at home whenever I changed out my home Windows PC. Other than that, I lost track of the community.
When I came to Google, I was tickled to find out that Bram worked here, though I never reached out to him personally. Before I knew it, he had retired, and I lost that chance.
For over 25 years, I have only ever used vim as my editor - at home or at work. It is the most dependable tool in my box, traveling with me through multiple employers and programming languages.
RIP Bram.
[+] [-] aspyct|2 years ago|reply
Thanks Bram, have a good afterlife.
[+] [-] Inocez|2 years ago|reply
> Keep me alive.[1]
[1] 10 Questions with Vim’s creator, Bram Moolenaar (2014) https://www.binpress.com/vim-creator-bram-moolenaar-intervie...
[+] [-] tzhenghao|2 years ago|reply
"How many of you are mostly using Emacs?"
a bunch of raised hands
"Okay, we'll try to convert some people today!"
RIP, Bram Moolenaar
[1] - https://youtu.be/p6K4iIMlouI
[+] [-] steinuil|2 years ago|reply
I used to use vim but lately I switched to Helix, which is basically vim but with all the good features and plugins built into it and without a configuration/extension language. Almost all of the features are easily discoverable by just pressing spacebar, and the rest by browsing the (small) documentation, and I can think of a way to do all the things Bram talks about from within Helix, often better (because it's relying on the language server).
Still, the main point about learning your tools by detecting inefficiencies and searching for a better way is always valid, and I'm sure that all these things Vim was already doing at the time helped pave the way for modern editors. RIP.
[+] [-] tlamponi|2 years ago|reply
https://moolenaar.net/habits_2007.pdf
[+] [-] bastardoperator|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] etewiah|2 years ago|reply
I can't quite remember what the relationship was but since then every time I use vim (not often admittedly ) I think of this Dutch woman looking after a jumble of wild animals in the middle of nowhere...
[+] [-] j13n|2 years ago|reply
Thoughts are with his friends and family right now. Rest in peace, Mr. Moolenaar.
ZZ
[+] [-] enriquto|2 years ago|reply
I was also deeply honored to see my (tiny, insignificant) minority language on his page for the word Mooleenar in many languages [0].
As a matter of respect and to honour his memory, I will keep using the last version of vim (by his last commit [1]) as my main text editor for as long as humanly feasible.
[0] https://www.moolenaar.net/
[1] https://github.com/vim/vim/commit/4c0089d696b8d1d5dc40568f25...
[+] [-] user3939382|2 years ago|reply
Bram’s passing is another chip at the passing of the world I knew, where vim was new.
Thank you Bram for your excellent and enviable contribution to computing.
[+] [-] Ecco|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] soulofmischief|2 years ago|reply
"It appears you think that everybody is like you. But that's not so."
I didn't take the advice well at the time, but now, a little older and wiser, I understand.
Thank you, Bram. Thank you for vim, for your time and dedication, and for taking the time to deposit a small amount of your wisdom into my brain. Sorry for being a dick.
[+] [-] edejong|2 years ago|reply