They are similar, but I stick to :wq. I fear mixing up :x with :X. Would probably catch the mistake when being asked to type the encryption key, but anyway
This feels monumental… can we get the black bar for the entire weekend.
This is the passing of someone that has fundamentally touched the lives of so many programmers… his work is now part of our very folklore, we make vim jokes, we emulate it in other tools, even the “enemy” (eMacs) eventually added evil mode (mind my humour it has sharp edges)… vim is mentioned in science fiction and has survived the journey from Unix to a plethora of other operating systems…
Not to sound bitter, but should we assume that dang does not consider the creator of vim to be worthy of a black banner? I keep forgetting that this site, despite having hacker in its name, is not really about hacking. Anyways, I hope Bram Moolenaar finds peace.
Or we could assume that dang is not awake 24/7, and does not have a neural interface to everything that happens on HN and in the world, and actually does other things with his life than moderate HN.
In short: he's such a lazy git with zero work ethnic.
Incredibly sorry to hear this. The times I have seen his name.. or thought about who this guy might be, and that he not only is a super programmer but also a humanitarian. Too countless to think about. RIP.
@dang I know we don't see the black bar often but I hope it is possible
Sadly this was my thought too. It's a way to start feeling super old, when the first generation start to die, and very few of the heros of open source have. But we're all getting old...
Bram defined the interface I've used to express myself in so many ways since my early teens. His contributions to software development reach far beyond the $EDITOR and pervasive interaction patterns we're all so familiar with.
Thoughts are with his friends and family right now. Rest in peace, Mr. Moolenaar.
As a long time Vim user I’m extremely thankful for Bram’s creation and stewardship of an incredible piece of software. He gave the world an amazing gift.
I’ve interacted with Bram a few times personally in the process of submitting changes to Vim, and I’ve observed many more interactions with others. I always had an immense amount of respect for the way he led the Vim project and interacted with the community. It is not uncommon to see open source software maintainers become burnt out or frustrated, particularly with a piece of software as quirky and complicated as Vim. But Bram was almost always respectful and patient with users and contributors, even when they were not.
This is a loss for the software world. Bram, you will be missed.
As an Emacs user [1] I can only say: RIP and thank you, for making the lives of programmers and engineers worldwide easier, with the healthy competition of Emacs and VIM approaches to text editing.
You live as long as your contribution to the world, and you can rest assured that a large part of us will still be using modal editing in our mind-controlled VR spatial googles.
:wq
--
1: just this morning I was trying evil-mode once again...
Vim is fascinating because it revived a kind of wonky tool in vi.
I remember learning about the command line and having to use original vi. It was weird. But Bram saw some underlying genius in the tool and revived it. Not just for vim itself, but all the vims, all the tools that have vim bindings, etc.
Sending heartfelt condolences to Bram's family. His last commit is just one month ago: https://github.com/vim/vim/commit/4c0089d696b8d1d5dc40568f25.... I wonder who else has access to vim.org and the official git repository and if there will be anyone step up to become vim's BDFL.
Judging by that the announcement email came from his own email, I'm guessing there has been some sort of redundancy setup done when the medical condition was initially detected.
Neovim has a bit of a different mentality compared to Vim; it's not the same project.
I don't really want to discus this in detail here as it's not the right location, but I think lots of people would be interested in continuing Vim, rather than having Vim being subsumed by Neovim. We'll have to see how things and the relationship between Vim and Neovim change and evolve in the coming weeks and months.
I assume there are multiple people willing and able to continue vim development and I think it might be important for that to happen. I just thought it was relevant in the context of that comment to mention the other project.
Few people could probably argue that they helped as many humans in dire situations like Bram did in his life. Vim was the first time I came across "charityware" as vim encourages users to donate to International Child Care Fund Holland on its splash screen, instead of begging for money for itself. I feel a bit of shame when I say that I've only donated to ICCF once over all these years....
As a remembrance of Bram and to thank him for building the editor I've been using for as long as I can remember, I'm doing exactly what he would have wanted me to do, donating to ICCF Holland. If you're a vim/nvim/other edition user, I suggest you to do the same: https://iccf-holland.org/donate.html
If you're a (neo)vim user, there is more information at `:help iccf` as well.
Thank you Bram for everything. I'm sure your spirit and lines written will stay with me and others for a very long time in the future.
Few contribute so meaningfully to the world through software as Bram did. I donated an amount as if I were purchasing vim as an expensive commercial text editor.
For most death announcements on HN, I have to look up who they were. Not this one. I greatly appreciate his work and contributions to the world.
For everyone reading this who has ever adored vim, or any of the editors that would go on to be inspired by vim, I can think of no better tribute to Bram than to make a donation to the charity that he spent the better part of his life advocating for.
Bram had been spending over 30 years on Vim; and not just "the occasional patch/bugfix", but significant amounts, and almost every single day for some years.
The number of people who spent that much time working on Open Source is very small, and the number of people who have spent that much time purely in their spare time is smaller still. In fact, I don't really know of anyone who even comes close to Bram.
The number of people who spent this much time volunteering for anything is very small.
Bram's effort on Vim was phenomenal and exceptional by any standard.
---
I only met Bram in person once, in 2014, when he talked about Zimbu[1]; at some point I must have given a bit of a skeptical look, and he promptly looked at me and asked "oh, you don't agree? Why not?" It was a nice talk with lots of "audience engagement" like this. We spent some time talking during the rest of the day and the next day; we discussed and joked about lots of things; I don't recall talking much about Vim: it just didn't come up. I found him a very friendly, warm, and likeable person.
Sven Guckes (who passed away last year) did organize a little "Ask Me Anything" type workshop with Bram, and I discovered Bram struggled remembering the ins-and-outs of some of the lesser used Vim features just as much as the rest of us :-)
> and the number of people who have spent that much time purely in their spare time (i.e. not as part of their job, like Torvalds or van Rossum) is smaller still.
I agree, but the fact that there's a non-zero amount of people doing it shouldn't be overlooked. For example maintainer of qutebrowser (who also happen to be in pytest core team) and apart from a teaching job at an university a couple of months per year, he's working full time on OSS. The main characteristics they share (at least those I met) seem to be a deep love for the craft, a deep love for people, and be virtually unfazed by the amount of money they can make if they weren't doing that.
I don't know if Bram's family has this thread or is reading it, but the extent to which his work has impacted the software development community is enormous.
Vim was one of the first pieces of software I learned when I switched to Linux in college. It was tricky at first, then it delighted me to no end. It remains a daily part of my life nearly 20 years later, and I'm still learning more about it every single year.
I can't count the number of times I wish I could drop out of insert mode in normal web browser text boxes.
Bram's insistence of donating his earnings to helping the children of Uganda is also incredibly selfless, and it's impossible to mention him without bringing this up [1].
We'll miss you Bram. We'll be learning from you for decades to come.
The news made me unexpectedly said. There are not many people that felt so close without ever knowing them, just because I used their software. Thank you for the reminder to donate: the least thing one can do now. I think most of the digital stuff I ever produced in my life was using vim. Software, scripts, websites, theses, a book, I actually even used a plugin to fill out text boxes in the web using vim.
All the stray 'i's in documents or source code in stuff I had to write with other editors give evidence to my dedication. Thank you Bram! May you live forever in vim.
I wrote on twitter that vim is a masterpiece. It's the gleaming precise machine tool on which so much of modernity was crafted. It's so hard to quantify Bram's impact, because he did so much through so powerful a force multiplier.
I started as a Unix sysadmin 25 years ago and kept gravitating towards vim. One practical reason is because it paid off to be familiar with vi, which is nearly always still available on just-installed or bare-bones systems. But another is how welcoming and leveling the Vim community was. It was so easy to get great macros and tips, and everyone was just super friendly about it. I remember someone in #vim irc teaching me "gqap" to wrap a paragraph, and they very naturally took the time to explain how it all worked. There was no sneering on from the community. I think Bram's empathy and leadership was a huge part of that attitude in the community.
I'm a regular annual donor on Vim's behalf, and this morning donated another €250 in Bram's memory. People should only donate what they can afford, we all have different means, but I'd encourage folks to work out what a great commercial editor or IDE would have cost them in licensing over their use time, and to consider donating in proportion.
> "I'm doing exactly what he would have wanted me to do, donating to ICCF Holland. If you're a vim/nvim/other edition user, I suggest you to do the same: https://iccf-holland.org/donate.html ."
Such sad news! Condolences to his family, friends and thousands of admirers worldwide. One way to commemorate his life is to donate to the charityware cause he championed: https://www.iccf-holland.org
rest in peace, bram. thanks for all you've done to software world. you will be missed by many, including those Ugandan kids whose lives have been changed for the better.
to the bereaved, I send you my deepest condolences.
Wow that hits rather hard actually. I never knew him other than through the welcome message on Vim, but he made one of the tools I rely on the most in my daily life.
I am likewise surprised by how hard this hits. I shouted out loud when I read the headline! Quite a reaction to somebody who I only ever saw one photo of and read the occasional release notes etc. Yet as a vim user, he has been part my daily activities for years.
The name Bram Moolenaar has hovered across all my work…
Damn… I have been using Vim for decades and never thought once about the people responsible for it. I need to be more thoughtful of this to acknowledge people’s excellent work.
Absolutely. I've written everything in Vim for almost as long as Vim has been around -- three books, dozens of talks and papers, who knows how many lines of code . . .
I had been joking on social media a few weeks ago that Vim must be "done" since patches stopped appearing about a month ago. Can't believe that the guy who created maybe the most important tool in my entire arsenal is gone.
Yes, very hard. I feel like I knew him - kind of silly given I've never met him and I don't think have even crossed emails with him. Yet I've used his work for decades and I think it's fair to say that there's a lot of him in Vim in a very real way. Wish I'd sent him a note to say thanks. GNU Bram.
It seems that behind that bare prompt and message lies a whole era where things were simpler in many dimensions. A bunch of help text, a charity suggestion, a cursor ... it was as simple as mysterious and capable.
448 comments
[ 3.6 ms ] story [ 283 ms ] thread@dang can HN put a black banner for Bram Moolenaar please?
Just as Bram would want :)
Thank you Sir Moolenaar for this journey.
VIM is definitely is one of those thin tiles that keep Open Source together
:wq and RIP
:w will touch the file (update mtime) whether you've made changes or not
:x will only update mtime if the file contents are actually changed
Can confirm. I have accidentally typed :X many times, but have never accidentally encrypted a file
This is the passing of someone that has fundamentally touched the lives of so many programmers… his work is now part of our very folklore, we make vim jokes, we emulate it in other tools, even the “enemy” (eMacs) eventually added evil mode (mind my humour it has sharp edges)… vim is mentioned in science fiction and has survived the journey from Unix to a plethora of other operating systems…
He will be missed.
The email address I've used in the past has been responded to promptly, that's probably more effective than an @ mention:
But in general.. yes.
In short: he's such a lazy git with zero work ethnic.
@dang I know we don't see the black bar often but I hope it is possible
You'll be seeing it *much* more often in the coming years as those of the older generation -- who made such large contributions -- pass on.
Thoughts are with his friends and family right now. Rest in peace, Mr. Moolenaar.
ZZ
I’ve interacted with Bram a few times personally in the process of submitting changes to Vim, and I’ve observed many more interactions with others. I always had an immense amount of respect for the way he led the Vim project and interacted with the community. It is not uncommon to see open source software maintainers become burnt out or frustrated, particularly with a piece of software as quirky and complicated as Vim. But Bram was almost always respectful and patient with users and contributors, even when they were not.
This is a loss for the software world. Bram, you will be missed.
You live as long as your contribution to the world, and you can rest assured that a large part of us will still be using modal editing in our mind-controlled VR spatial googles.
:wq
--
1: just this morning I was trying evil-mode once again...
I remember learning about the command line and having to use original vi. It was weird. But Bram saw some underlying genius in the tool and revived it. Not just for vim itself, but all the vims, all the tools that have vim bindings, etc.
I don't really want to discus this in detail here as it's not the right location, but I think lots of people would be interested in continuing Vim, rather than having Vim being subsumed by Neovim. We'll have to see how things and the relationship between Vim and Neovim change and evolve in the coming weeks and months.
I have a weaker assumption - somebody will keep maintaining it, but active feature development is in question.
It is a software that brings joy each time I use it.
Can we please have a black banner?
:q
As a remembrance of Bram and to thank him for building the editor I've been using for as long as I can remember, I'm doing exactly what he would have wanted me to do, donating to ICCF Holland. If you're a vim/nvim/other edition user, I suggest you to do the same: https://iccf-holland.org/donate.html
If you're a (neo)vim user, there is more information at `:help iccf` as well.
Thank you Bram for everything. I'm sure your spirit and lines written will stay with me and others for a very long time in the future.
For most death announcements on HN, I have to look up who they were. Not this one. I greatly appreciate his work and contributions to the world.
The number of people who spent that much time working on Open Source is very small, and the number of people who have spent that much time purely in their spare time is smaller still. In fact, I don't really know of anyone who even comes close to Bram.
The number of people who spent this much time volunteering for anything is very small.
Bram's effort on Vim was phenomenal and exceptional by any standard.
---
I only met Bram in person once, in 2014, when he talked about Zimbu[1]; at some point I must have given a bit of a skeptical look, and he promptly looked at me and asked "oh, you don't agree? Why not?" It was a nice talk with lots of "audience engagement" like this. We spent some time talking during the rest of the day and the next day; we discussed and joked about lots of things; I don't recall talking much about Vim: it just didn't come up. I found him a very friendly, warm, and likeable person.
Sven Guckes (who passed away last year) did organize a little "Ask Me Anything" type workshop with Bram, and I discovered Bram struggled remembering the ins-and-outs of some of the lesser used Vim features just as much as the rest of us :-)
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_O-QdG2X1Lw)
I agree, but the fact that there's a non-zero amount of people doing it shouldn't be overlooked. For example maintainer of qutebrowser (who also happen to be in pytest core team) and apart from a teaching job at an university a couple of months per year, he's working full time on OSS. The main characteristics they share (at least those I met) seem to be a deep love for the craft, a deep love for people, and be virtually unfazed by the amount of money they can make if they weren't doing that.
Vim was one of the first pieces of software I learned when I switched to Linux in college. It was tricky at first, then it delighted me to no end. It remains a daily part of my life nearly 20 years later, and I'm still learning more about it every single year.
I can't count the number of times I wish I could drop out of insert mode in normal web browser text boxes.
Bram's insistence of donating his earnings to helping the children of Uganda is also incredibly selfless, and it's impossible to mention him without bringing this up [1].
We'll miss you Bram. We'll be learning from you for decades to come.
[1] https://www.vim.org/sponsor/faq.php
You can, if you really want to:
https://github.com/glacambre/firenvim
Vim has shaped so many aspects of my professional life; I'll forever be grateful to Bram for his work and contributions. Rest in peace, Bram.
All the stray 'i's in documents or source code in stuff I had to write with other editors give evidence to my dedication. Thank you Bram! May you live forever in vim.
Edit: Hmm... PayPal seems to throw error after error at me when I try to donate. I'll keep trying.
I started as a Unix sysadmin 25 years ago and kept gravitating towards vim. One practical reason is because it paid off to be familiar with vi, which is nearly always still available on just-installed or bare-bones systems. But another is how welcoming and leveling the Vim community was. It was so easy to get great macros and tips, and everyone was just super friendly about it. I remember someone in #vim irc teaching me "gqap" to wrap a paragraph, and they very naturally took the time to explain how it all worked. There was no sneering on from the community. I think Bram's empathy and leadership was a huge part of that attitude in the community.
I'm a regular annual donor on Vim's behalf, and this morning donated another €250 in Bram's memory. People should only donate what they can afford, we all have different means, but I'd encourage folks to work out what a great commercial editor or IDE would have cost them in licensing over their use time, and to consider donating in proportion.
:wq Bram
In view of https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/7FzD7pNm9X68Gp5ZC/why-our-ki...
I'm calling out that I have donated.
Rest in Peace, Bram.
:'( RIP Bram
to the bereaved, I send you my deepest condolences.
RIP and thank you. Thoughts are with his loved ones right now.
Thanks Bram, have a good afterlife.
The name Bram Moolenaar has hovered across all my work…
Thank you Mr. Moolenaar.
I had been joking on social media a few weeks ago that Vim must be "done" since patches stopped appearing about a month ago. Can't believe that the guy who created maybe the most important tool in my entire arsenal is gone.