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Bram Moolenaar has died

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Re: Bram Moolenaar has died

#341

Post by ravishi »

I have been programming for more than 15 years. I've used vim since the very beginning and it always puzzled me as something so genuinely clever. Using vim is a joy. I feel good while doing it. Bram has been this strong influence in my life all due to his software.

Re: Bram Moolenaar has died

#344

Post by rfmc »

I'm speechless; I never thought I would feel this sad for a person whom I've never met, not even sent a message or an email. I don't even know his face, and yet, the impact of his work on my life is so immense that it feels like sailing at night, and then the lighthouse suddenly goes dark. RIP.

Re: Bram Moolenaar has died

#345

Post by alarge »

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.

RIP Bram.

Re: Bram Moolenaar has died

#346

Post by cyphar »

I never had the good fortune to meet him, but his work on vim has had an impact on my life every day ever since I started programming as a teenager. Seeing his name along with the "charityware" license of vim each time I create a new file had an impact on me when I first started using vim and I went to read up on this "odd fellow" using a non-standard license. I eventually stopped paying attention to it after many years of seeing the same screen every day. I didn't have money to donate when I first started using vim, but given the news I've donated to ICCF Holland in honour of his career-long effort to bring attention to the charity.

We lost a good one today. My heartfelt condolences go out to his family through this difficult time. I hope they are honoured to know that his work had an impact on so many people's lives. What an enormous loss. Rest in peace, Bram Moolenaar.

Re: Bram Moolenaar has died

#348

Post by capableweb »

tomcam wrote: post #323
uean wrote: post #320

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…

> 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.) That’s very good to hear. I donated, but not very much – I assumed that their money would end up going to the wrong places. How did Bram manage to avoid this?

> I assumed that their money would end up going to the wrong places. How did Bram manage to avoid this?

From the LICENSE (https://vimdoc.sourceforge.net/htmldoc/uganda.html#license):

> Compared with other organizations that do child sponsorship the amounts are very low. This is because the money goes directly to the centre. Less than 5% is used for administration. This is possible because this is a small organization that works with volunteers. [...]

> How do you know that the money will be spent right? First of all you have my personal guarantee as the author of Vim. I trust the people that are working at the centre, I know them personally. Further more, the centre has been co-sponsored and inspected by World Vision, Save the Children Fund and is now under the supervision of Pacific Academy Outreach Society. The centre is visited about once a year to check the progress (at our own cost). I have visited the centre myself many times, starting in 1993. The visit reports are on the ICCF web site.

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