Another Vim vs Emacs story.
One of my CS teachers at PUT (Poznań University of Technology) used to say:
Kto ma jaja używa viaja
(which rhymes in polish and means: one who have balls is using vim) RIP
Bram Moolenaar has died
401–410 of 449 posts
Re: Bram Moolenaar has died
#402Went 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…
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.
Re: Bram Moolenaar has died
#403Bram was a great man. Vim is a great piece of software. Vim is charityware. Distributed for free, it encourages people to make donations to help children in Unganda. I used to donate some money, starting from 2010. Bram sent you a key corresponding to your donation when he received it, and you could use the key to accumulate the amount of you donations, which would give you some priority in suggesting improvements in Vim. He responded very promptly after donations were made. My last donation on 17 July 2023 did not receive his reply, and I was worried.
I am by no means a Vim master, but Vim is virtually the ONLY text editor that I have been using since 2009. I typed my Ph.D. thesis (in Chinese!) and all of my papers/code using Vim.
Bram, thank you very much for this masterpiece. Thank you for making your masterpiece charityware, which has inspired me to do the same thing with my code.
R.I.P.
Re: Bram Moolenaar has died
#404Earlier quoted context omitted.
Also creating abstractions without considering the mental overhead of reasoning about what the code is doing. Not enterprise: event --> action. Enterprise: event --> abstraction --> abstraction --> abstraction --> abstraction --> abstraction --> abstraction --> abstraction --> abstraction --> action_parta --> abstraction --> abstraction --> abstraction --> action_partb abstraction --> abstraction --> abstraction -->…
I sometimes wonder if people believe that enterprise devs create abstractions for "fun" without having any rational reason.
In my experience enterprise devs don't really like what they are having to create either. They feel boxed into it because of all the petty rules that large organisations create.
Re: Bram Moolenaar has died
#405RIP, vim is some of the only software that works well that I can use pretty much anywhere.
Re: Bram Moolenaar has died
#406Wow this came out of nowhere. :( I had no idea he was struggling with a health issue. Some context: https://groups.google.com/g/vim_dev/c/ivkq22t3LQM
Bram was a a legend.
So many people dying right now. Hopefully it was not the same cause that so many other people relatively young are dying from right now. Seems he was 62, not so old yet. Wondering what happened to him ?
RIP, I've spent more time in Vim than any other software for sure, still use it to edit my journals and editing single files when needed.
Re: Bram Moolenaar has died
#407For anyone looking to learn Vim, this is an educational game that's actually pretty fun: https://vim-adventures.com/
I loved that website at first but abandoned it in frustration an hour after I subscribed, because turned out it didn’t work with my QWERTZ layout.
Re: Bram Moolenaar has died
#408I remember Bram Moolenar as the guy who had the "Help Children in Uganda!" button in the GUI version of Vim. Were it not for that, surely I would not have remembered the man: he would have just been an anonymous open source software developer.
Re: Bram Moolenaar has died
#409Personal Anecdote: 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 gathe…
> 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 su…
My personal theory is that "humble" people are more open to ideas and collaboration with others.
I've seen too many people with big egos who stagnate as developers. They were the top of their class in school and were used to being the "smartest" in the room. When they start working, they often make a toxic work environment and can be a huge negative impact. Unfortunately their confidence makes them more appealing to the management and many are promoted to positions where they have even less reasons to listen to others "below them" and eventually stop improving
Those that are humble and eager to learn and work with others are a huge boost to the team. The mythical 10x programmer may not exist, but a single individual can certainly make a 10x team.
Re: Bram Moolenaar has died
#410Wow this came out of nowhere. :( I had no idea he was struggling with a health issue. Some context: https://groups.google.com/g/vim_dev/c/ivkq22t3LQM
Bram was a a legend. So many people dying right now. Hopefully it was not the same cause that so many other people relatively young are dying from right now. Seems he was 62, not so old yet. Wondering what happened to him ? RIP, I've spent more time in Vim than any other software for sure, still use it to edit my journals and editing single files when needed.
> the same cause
What cause is that?