[HN Gopher] Vim Boss
___________________________________________________________________
 
Vim Boss
 
Author : bpierre
Score  : 657 points
Date   : 2023-08-10 17:02 UTC (5 hours ago)
 
web link (neovim.io)
w3m dump (neovim.io)
 
| Dulat_Akan wrote:
| keep going bro good post
 
| emerongi wrote:
| Vim has soul. It is that chisel you inherited from your grandpa
| that you keep using. It fits well in your grip and is
| comfortable, even though it lacks the soft rubber that the new
| ones in the store have. It's a tool with its own history.
| 
| Reading the comments here, it seems that the hacker's mentality
| still lives on. The new young billion-dollar company will be
| replaced in another 10-20 years. Vim lives on. I wish to build a
| Vim of my own one day.
 
| RetroTechie wrote:
| Thought a linked article:
| 
| https://j11g.com/2023/08/07/the-legacy-of-bram-moolenaar/
| 
| By Jan van den Berg, was a better read. One quote:
| 
| "Vim is a masterpiece, the gleaming precise machining tool from
| which so much of modernity was crafted".
| 
| And then this link:
| 
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=eX9m3g5J-XA
| 
| "7 Habits for Effective Text Editing 2.0"
| 
| 1h20m - If anyone has a transcript or summary: plz. But this was
| funny - first comment:
| 
| "I let auto play go on while I was sleeping for 7 hours and went
| from Billie Eilish to this"
| 
| Life is weird but I love it :-)
| 
| Disclaimer: I'm not even user of either (Neo)vim or Emacs. As
| soon as I read "programmable", I'm off. I just prefer fixed-
| function editor that suits my taste , a few minutes of
| configuration & go. But that's just me, what do I know?
| 
| That said: good tools serve a purpose. Our world is a better
| place with good tools in it - and the ppl who made those tools.
| And sometimes their legacy, their philosophy, their way of doing
| things, lives on in the code (or the community!) they left
| behind. So kudoz to Bram!
 
  | mlry wrote:
  | _> "7 Habits for Effective Text Editing 2.0"
  | 
  | >1h20m - If anyone has a transcript or summary: plz. But this
  | was funny - first comment:_
  | 
  | Here you go: https://moolenaar.net/habits_2007.pdf
  | 
  | Courtesy of tlamponi [1]:
  | 
  | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37013315
 
  | RGBCube wrote:
  | > Disclaimer: I'm not even user of either of (Neo)vim or Emacs.
  | As soon as I read "programmable", I'm off. I just prefer fixed-
  | function editor that suits my taste , a few minutes of
  | configuration & go. But that's just me, what do I know?
  | 
  | Then Helix may be for you! It uses the Kakoune keybinds, which
  | make SO MUCH SENSE compared to Vim or Emacs. And it's already
  | pre configured and includes a lot of useful features. I have
  | been daily driving it and it's pretty fast and good. Since it
  | automatically uses LSPs if they are in the PATH, it requires
  | very minimal configuration, my configuration only includes
  | theme and some stylistic changes, you can take a look at it if
  | you'd like:
  | https://github.com/RGBCube/NixOSConfiguration/blob/master/ma...
 
  | petre wrote:
  | > As soon as I read "programmable", I'm off. I just prefer
  | fixed-function editor that suits my taste
  | 
  | I never have to "program" Vim apart from set nocompatible, set
  | ruler, backspace, indentation and maybe pick another
  | colorscheme from the defaults (usually torte).
  | 
  | On neovim I installed lightline and pathogen, monokai
  | colorscheme and something else I forgot about, maybe syntax
  | highlighting for some more exotic language.
  | 
  | The point is Vim _is_ a fixed function editor until you start
  | loading it up like a xmas tree.
 
    | gorjusborg wrote:
    | > The point is Vim is a fixed function editor until you start
    | loading it up like a xmas tree.
    | 
    | Exactly, just because you can doesn't mean you need to, or
    | should.
 
  | bla3 wrote:
  | I don't know if it's necessary to be competitive about
  | eulogies, but the one you posted was also touching. Thank you
  | for posting it. The picture of Bram's GitHub contribution graph
  | is haunting.
 
| MSFT_Edging wrote:
| I once interviewed an intern candidate who bragged about getting
| into an argument with Bram on the mailing lists over a possible
| vulnerability. Bram insisted it was not important, and this young
| gun insisted it was.
| 
| We didn't hire the guy. It's interesting seeing these memorials
| for Bram, from what people say he was the polar opposite of this
| kid in a good way.
 
  | sitzkrieg wrote:
  | at least they cared enough to stick to their guns i guess
 
    | twobitshifter wrote:
    | The article talks about modesty and meeting in the middle,
    | but I get the impression that the younger dev didn't want to
    | budge or understand the other point being made by Bram.
 
    | dudus wrote:
    | Indeed, not 100% clear but it felt like GP was criticizing
    | the kid.
    | 
    | The kid enters a security related conversation and Bram not
    | only listens but engages in the conversation. Seems like you
    | missed on a great hire.
 
      | cweagans wrote:
      | Bram listened to and engaged in most conversations, I
      | think. He was very approachable.
 
  | anon7331 wrote:
  | Was this kid arguing about the automatic encrypt/decrypt file
  | capability and Bram's unwillingness to use a cryptographically
  | secure algorithm? It was a long, long thread that got heated.
  | 
  | I was with Bram though! It was never meant to be secure in a
  | cryptographic sense...
 
    | coldtea wrote:
    | "Never meant to be cryptographically secure" should never go
    | together with "encrypt/decrypt file capability".
    | 
    | This can even mean someone's loss of life in the right
    | (meaning wrong) regime, or property (e.g. storing bitcoin
    | info there).
    | 
    | It's like advertising a "self-driving technology" when your
    | car needs human supervision to not crash and kill you or
    | someone you fall into.
 
      | anon7331 wrote:
      | I am not sure it's so black and white with encryption. It
      | depends on your threat model. Keeping it secure from an
      | angry ex-girlfriend is one thing, but keeping it secure
      | from a three letter agency is another.
      | 
      | The mistake you are referring to is someone that assumes
      | "encrypted" means three letter agency safe, which is a
      | pretty terrible way to leverage encryption. In that case,
      | it's exactly like hopping in a Tesla and assuming auto
      | pilot will take you home without your supervision.
 
        | H8crilA wrote:
        | This would make sense if only it wasn't faster to run
        | AES_GCM or some other AEAD, than whatever they did there.
 
        | coldtea wrote:
        | > _The mistake you are referring to is someone that
        | assumes "encrypted" means three letter agency safe, which
        | is a pretty terrible way to leverage encryption._
        | 
        | That's not a mistake, that's table stakes. People reading
        | that X offers "encryption", should assume its
        | cryptographically safe to the standards of the day, and
        | be given that.
        | 
        | Not just some "safe from your spouse, ...maybe..."
        | glorified rot13.
        | 
        | Else, just don't offer it. It's not Vim's place to offer
        | "file encryption" anyway, especially if they can't keep
        | that promise. It's fine not to offer it.
        | 
        | And it doesn't have to be a "three letter agency" that's
        | the threat. The "angry ex-girlfriend" could might as well
        | be a programmer. Or have a script-kiddie nephew. Or know
        | a person or two who can use off-the-shelf tools to
        | decrypt it. And the file might have things like a
        | person's bank account passwords.
 
| gitaarik wrote:
| Today at a train station in the Netherlands (Utrecht) I noticed
| something special. I saw the letters hjkl on the sign in reverse
| order. These letters indentify the platform areas where you can
| enter the train. Depending on the length of the platform and the
| area where the train has entrances, it shows the letters.
| 
| https://postimg.cc/mcCWhMXw
| 
| Either this was super coincidence, or someone at the NS (the
| Dutch train company) is a vim fan and payed tribute to Bram like
| this.
 
  | zabzonk wrote:
  | not a coincedence or tribute - same has been the same in the uk
  | for many years. the letter "i" is typically not used for such
  | purposes because it can so easily be confused with numeric "1"
  | or alpha "l".
 
  | gitaarik wrote:
  | Although, thinking about it now, the letters do come after each
  | other in the alpbabeth except that the I is missing between the
  | H and J, but maybe they did that intentionally because it can
  | be confused with the lower case L. So maybe just coincidence
  | after all, but still it was special for me. I never saw this at
  | the trains and now suddenly the week after Bram passed away
  | this shows up.
 
  | emerongi wrote:
  | Although I use vim, I associate these letters more with the
  | home row for touch typists.
 
| 29athrowaway wrote:
| Bram is a guy who could have chosen to make millions but instead
| helped millions.
 
| zgluck wrote:
| 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.
| 
| 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.
 
| chaps wrote:
| Vim has had a legitimate impact on my life. Over the past 15
| years I've been using it, "set -o vi" and similar in psql/ipython
| get added into my rc files almost immediately on a new host.
| Many, many hours upon hours of living in a shell have been made
| so much more enjoyable because of his work.
| 
| Thank you for posting this. Rest in peace, friend.
 
| ansible wrote:
| Thanks Bram.
| 
| I've been using Vim (and sometimes more recently Neovim) for over
| 30 years (nearly every work day of my entire career), having used
| `vi` on various BSD systems in school. In all that time, I've
| never been on the mailing list for Vim, asked a question or
| submitted a bug report. _I 've never needed to do so_. Because
| I've never run into a bug or had a question that couldn't be
| answered by the built in documentation.
| 
| A quality software project, lead by a quality man. You've been an
| inspiration.
 
| aprao wrote:
| I reflected on my Vim journey after Bram passed away. It has been
| my only constant professional companion in the past 10 years -
| from university projects to FAANGs to everything-on-fire
| startups. All professional work I have done - the ones I am proud
| of, the ones that I am ashamed of, the ones that got me
| promotions and the ones that resulted in $M SEVs - was done on
| Vim. Oses/DBs/PLs/companies/co-workers come and go, but Vim has
| been forever.
| 
| Thanks Bram.
 
| parentheses wrote:
| Aside from the POSIX toolchain/kernel/etc and browser (which I'd
| use if it neatly embedded into vim), vim and its siblings are
| together the most used program on my machine.
| 
| It's only today that I am forced to think about this: One person
| drove that program from an idea in their head to a high-quality,
| hackable program that I've fallen in love with over the years! A
| program that I have used for so many hours, but has never crashed
| once (neovim does crash, but vim has never done this for me.)
| This is an impressive feat given the sheer volume of vim plugins
| and configurations I've gone through!
| 
| Thank you Bram! You built an amazing program and the community
| around it!
 
| vjust wrote:
| thanks Bram.
 
| michaelmrose wrote:
| It is nice to see tasteful and profitable disagreement in place
| of simple drama. It's a credit to all parties.
 
  | tequila_shot wrote:
  | sorry, what disagreement? I didn't find any in the article.
 
    | ampersandy wrote:
    | The implied disagreement for why neovim exists to provide
    | functionality that wouldn't have been merged into vim.
 
    | BlackjackCF wrote:
    | Some people take issue with NeoVim, because they believe it
    | splits the Vim community and takes people power away from Vim
    | development.
 
      | prmoustache wrote:
      | Some people can't grasp how the world is working.
 
      | SpaceManNabs wrote:
      | > because they believe it splits the Vim community and
      | takes people power away from Vim development
      | 
      | I don't understand this point, and I tried to parse it and
      | still don't. (I understand that you are just relaying it).
      | 
      | If vim maintainers don't want neovim to exist, they should
      | have accepted the merges earlier. If they disagree with the
      | merges (which I think they did), then that power doesn't
      | belong in Vim anyways.
      | 
      | edit: this reminds me of this conversation from years ago
      | 
      | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14245705
      | 
      | Check DSMan195276's comments.
      | 
      | And finally before I derail, I want to bring stuff back to
      | the focus: RIP Braam.
 
        | coldtea wrote:
        | > _I don 't understand this point, and I tried to parse
        | it and still don't. (...) If vim maintainers don't want
        | neovim to exist, they should have accepted the merges
        | earlier. If they disagree with the merges (which I think
        | they did), then that power doesn't belong in Vim anyways_
        | 
        | It's a very simple point to understand: whether the
        | merges are good or not, the presence of a fork still
        | "splits the Vim community and takes people power away
        | from Vim development".
        | 
        | And if they're bad (which is the way they see it), they
        | do it for no good reason too.
        | 
        | That's regardless of people "having the right to fork".
        | Yes they do. But also yes, if they exercize that right,
        | they do split a community and divert interest from a
        | project to 2 projects.
 
        | shanusmagnus wrote:
        | I guess you're right, the logic you describe is simple,
        | but I submit that there's a more fundamental logic: If
        | the folks who split away pull people out of the original
        | community, it means there was demand for the things that
        | prompted the split in the first place.
        | 
        | If Neovim had nothing to offer vs vanilla Vim, nobody
        | would have followed them. This seems like efficient
        | exploration of an idea space, to me, and something to be
        | celebrated.
 
        | LexiMax wrote:
        | > That's regardless of people "having the right to fork".
        | Yes they do. But also yes, if they exercize that right,
        | they do split a community and divert interest from a
        | project to 2 projects.
        | 
        | You're not dividing the same-sized pie.
        | 
        | The alternative to a fork is a single project with fewer
        | contributors.
        | 
        | The alternative to two communities is a single community
        | that's not as large as the two would've been, with a good
        | chunk of those remaining having unfulfilled wishes or
        | unheard complaints.
        | 
        | The alternative to Vim as it is today is very likely Vim
        | without a a few of its new features and improvements that
        | came with Vim 8 and 9.
        | 
        | Forks are good.
 
        | falcolas wrote:
        | What splits it more, IMO, is that neovim went in a non-
        | compatible direction with many of their design choices.
        | They have good arguments for doing so, but it still means
        | that writing community plugins that can work with either
        | version of vim is inherently harder.
 
        | coldtea wrote:
        | I guess if they haven't gotten in a non-compatible
        | direction, then they wouldn't have made enough change to
        | guarantee a fork.
 
    | michaelmrose wrote:
    | Disagreement insofar as the direction of vim. Neovim choosing
    | to go there on way on functionality they wanted to implement
    | both ultimately enriched vim as some ideas found there way
    | into vim proper and gave the community additional options.
    | 
    | Such splits aren't always handled well and value is lost when
    | good ideas aren't merged back because of personal reasons and
    | when contributors stop contributing because they are turned
    | off by the drama. See libav vs ffmpeg.
 
  | dudus wrote:
  | Is there any disagreement on who is going to support Vim moving
  | forward?
  | 
  | I can see the fork maintainers going into a power struggle if
  | the future is unclear. Maybe some will even write fluffy pieces
  | on how much they loved Bram to gather support...
 
    | lost_tourist wrote:
    | Neovim and vim are very independent projects, so this doesn't
    | really affect neovim all that much. Is that what you're
    | talking about?
 
      | jgb1984 wrote:
      | Not entirely correct since neovim never stopped merging
      | upstream patches from vim. So what happens in vim does
      | influence neovim.
 
| djha-skin wrote:
| I'm shocked. I've been a vim user my whole life. I use neovim
| lately, but I didn't even know Bram was dead. I've never
| interacted with him personally, but I've interacted with the tool
| he wrote and the documentation he wrote almost on a daily basis.
| Vim is part of me.
| 
| I know the project will likely continue, but I can't help but
| thinking: what now?
| 
| It brings up this issue of death in software for me. Software is
| getting old enough now that it is starting to outlive its
| authors. RIP Anthony Grimes and Ian Murdock. I have used both of
| these men's software after their demise[1][2], and I am grateful
| for it.
| 
| However, it does make me think. Grimes' software continues to
| have issues filed against it[3] by folks unaware that no one is
| getting notifications for them. On the other hand, Debian was
| popular enough to continue after Ian's passing, and continues to
| gain momentum.
| 
| I know it might be too soon for me to wonder about these
| questions to an audience. These were the giants on whose
| shoulders we continue to work today. I'm glad their code
| persists.
| 
| 1: https://github.com/Raynes/fs
| 
| 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_Murdock
| 
| 3: https://github.com/Raynes/fs/pulls
 
  | deltarholamda wrote:
  | There is another thread on HN about vim development going
  | forward, posted on the Google Group for vim development.
  | Christian Brabandt mentions several issues that will need to be
  | resolved, e.g. the hosting situation for the site.
  | 
  | I feel that this would be an ideal thing for one of the various
  | open source foundations to address. I.e., provide a single-
  | source hosting environment for open source projects without
  | needing to lean on for-profit corporations, which would include
  | some form of hit-by-a-bus solution for those projects that lose
  | a core (or sole) developer.
  | 
  | Trying to piece this stuff together after the fact is always a
  | chore. And no amount of "well, they should have a plan in
  | place" will help. People don't think they're going to die
  | tomorrow, so there's always a reason to put it off for later,
  | so they do.
  | 
  | I don't think anybody's worried about Linux going poof if Linus
  | unexpectantly returns to his home planet, but there are plenty
  | of projects that might have some issues. Having all of the
  | domains, DNS, hosting, etc. somewhere with a real employee that
  | can be contacted to move control to new people if required is a
  | good thing.
 
    | nektro wrote:
    | https://sourcehut.org/ fits this pretty well
 
    | graphviz wrote:
    | What? Project founders and software authors might not always
    | be around?
 
  | metadat wrote:
  | Bram Moolenaar's passing became public last Saturday:
  | 
  |  _Bram Moolenaar has died_ -
  | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37011324 (4272 points, 430
  | comments)
 
| bilekas wrote:
| So often we hear after someone dies how great they really where
| when infact they were like most people, a mixed bag. We all have
| ups and downs etc.
| 
| There are some though that really do live up to the postmortem
| messages and for sure Bram is one of them, i was lucky to meet
| him and actually spend some time shooting shit with him. At the
| time i didn't realize how big a deal he was, it was only later i
| would actually get to know and appreciate VIM, but from all of
| that it made me appreciate him a lot more. So when I read these
| kind of posts i can't help feel sad of course but I do get
| shivers of how damn ossum he really was. The testimonials to him
| hit so hard knowing they're 100% genuine. We need more like him,
| he will be really missed.
 
  | topher200 wrote:
  | I occasionally ponder on how frustrating it is that the
  | deceased don't get to hear their eulogies. It would have been
  | amazing for Bram to have been able to experience all the
  | outpouring of support and love from people he is interacted
  | with during his life. Especially in a context where the
  | speakers aren't considering him as an audience -- they're
  | sharing their deep and true feelings.
  | 
  | No one can really be sure how their acquaintances feel about
  | them. Eulogies are the closest we get. Imagine if he were able
  | to hear all these great things said about him... It would be
  | such a joy.
 
    | bmiller2 wrote:
    | Larry David had the same thought, and it was the theme of the
    | episode "The Covid Hoarder" in Curb Your Enthusiasm wherein
    | Albert Brooks stages a funeral for his non-deceased self.
 
    | dmvdoug wrote:
    | This is why I always make it a point to tell people how much
    | I appreciate them and why (when I do, I mean). It can be
    | awkward at first, but I've developed a good self-deprecation
    | that lets me excuse myself for being gushy ("I might start
    | crying; I'm a crier!"), and that disarms people for the most
    | part. I think it's really important that we let people know
    | how much we value them and why we honor/respect them when we
    | do. Because most of us do wander through life in a cloud of
    | unknowing and uncertainty.
 
    | jfax wrote:
    | That's what birthdays are for. I like to think, anyway.
 
    | abraae wrote:
    | Off topic but your comment makes me think of Nick Drake. He
    | died at 26, before even knowing he'd achieved anything, his
    | music barely listened to, probably feeling a failure.
    | Posthumously he's one of the world's most acclaimed recording
    | artists. RIP Bram.
 
      | block_dagger wrote:
      | Good example, although Van Gogh is probably the more cited.
 
        | halifaxbeard wrote:
        | "The Doctor and Amy take Vincent Van Gogh - who struggled
        | to sell a single painting in his own lifetime - to a
        | Paris art Gallery in the year 2010"
        | 
        | https://youtu.be/ubTJI_UphPk
 
        | mongol wrote:
        | Another example is Stieg Larsson, author of the Girl with
        | the dragon tattoo triology. He died before these books
        | were published.
 
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