121–123 of 123 posts
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.
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.
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.