[HN Gopher] Vim Boss
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Vim Boss
Author : bpierre
Score : 657 points
Date : 2023-08-10 17:02 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (neovim.io)
(TXT) 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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