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Bram Moolenaar has died

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Re: Bram Moolenaar has died

#101

Post by JohnMakin »

I've used vim for everything going on my entire career now.

It started in my senior year as a CS student - in an operating systems course, we were introduced to a lot of linux stuff and the professor taught Vim as part of his course. At first I rebelled. I chose to develop most of my projects in eclipse/Java at that point and had developed an aversion to the command line. That, plus Vim's learning curve made me hate it at first.

Fast forward a year at my first job at an embedded systems shop writing in pure C, all the vets used vim and I saw how fast they were with it and it made me want to learn. I think my first "aha!" moment was when I accidentally entered visual mode and prepended several lines at once with a comment. After that I was hooked, and while I'm typically one of the only ones using pure vim on any team I'm on, inevitably after a year or so at the job people see how I use it and start asking about it.

Re: Bram Moolenaar has died

#102

Post by keepamovin »

scop wrote: post #55
aspyct wrote: post #33

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. Thanks Bram, have a good afterlife.

I am likewise surprised by how hard this hits. I shouted out loud when I read the headline! Quite a reaction to somebody who I only ever saw one photo of and read the occasional release notes etc. Yet as a vim user, he has been part my daily activities for years. The name Bram Moolenaar has hovered across all my work… Thank you Mr. Moolenaar.

Yeah, relate. It shows you that with some good software, you can make an impact.

Re: Bram Moolenaar has died

#103

Post by marcyb5st »

As a former colleague, I remember one funny interaction with him. I was sitting in the same desk but on a different floor. One sleepy morning I tried to oust him from his desk and once I recognized him we ended up chatting few minutes about open source at Google and his involvement. Great person and as a Vim user forever grateful for his efforts.

Re: Bram Moolenaar has died

#105

Post by INTPenis »

Still to this day when I start my daily vim session I see his personal message to donate to the children of Uganda. I've been seeing this message for well over 20 years, my entire career for sure. What an impact to have on IT, and on the world. You're forever remembered Bram.

Re: Bram Moolenaar has died

#106

Post by echelon »

arp242 wrote: post #81
capableweb wrote: post #19

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 an…

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 numbe…

I don't know if Bram's family has this thread or is reading it, but the extent to which his work has impacted the software development community is enormous.

Vim was one of the first pieces of software I learned when I switched to Linux in college. It was tricky at first, then it delighted me to no end. It remains a daily part of my life nearly 20 years later, and I'm still learning more about it every single year.

I can't count the number of times I wish I could drop out of insert mode in normal web browser text boxes.

Bram's insistence of donating his earnings to helping the children of Uganda is also incredibly selfless, and it's impossible to mention him without bringing this up [1].

We'll miss you Bram. We'll be learning from you for decades to come.

[1] https://www.vim.org/sponsor/faq.php

Re: Bram Moolenaar has died

#107

Post by etewiah »

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...

Re: Bram Moolenaar has died

#108

Post by caseyw »

With things like this, you realize how short life is, and sometimes how brittle it can be. I often forget that the people that built the foundation of what we use every day are still with us, and we have a short time to be able to show them appreciation before we say thank you to someone who has gone, if you know of someone that has dedicated time to something that you use, show your appreciation this week. It might be the last time that you have the opportunity to make that human contact.

Thank you, sir. <3 vim

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