
Bram Moolenaar Discusses Developing Vim, How He Uses It, and Version 8 - laktak
http://www.hostingadvice.com/blog/vim-creator-champions-charityware/
======
mixedmath
I love vim, and I'm always happy to read interviews with the developers who
make and manage the tools I use or like. However, I find this article to be
somewhat of a mishmash with an uncertain audience. From the title, I had
expected this to be a transcript of an interview. But it's not. Thank you for
the link.

The article also heavily implies that Bram is the sole and only developer, and
mentions that vim has had four updates since 2006. Both of these are true only
up to extremely narrow interpretation, and not what I would expect from an
article purporting to interview and describe a project maintainer and the
project.

~~~
Exuma
It's also on a scammy review site for hosting affiliate links, and fake crappy
"ratings"

------
akkartik
Has Bram Moolenaar ever publicly acknowledged the influence of Neovim on Vim
8? At the very least, Neovim provided the market research to show that async
was worth doing.

~~~
owaislone
Neovim is Vim for me and many other users. Vim is irrelevant to me now. The
community is rallying behind Neovim and it shows great potential. It just
needs to be bundled by major distros so it can be installed on servers with 1
command and that'll be the end of old Vim. Bram has done a tremendous job with
Vim but it's time to move on to the Vim of the future.

~~~
mcjiggerlog
I've never touched neovim as I'm perfectly happy with vim - what reasons are
there for me to consider making the switch?

I would guess neovim isn't even on the radar of most vim users. I don't see
neovim surpassing vim any time soon, personally.

~~~
libria
Neovim's popularity is more with extension developers. My understanding is
that it enables them to develop features rivaling those in IDEs. Vim users
won't switch for Neovim itself, but they might if extension writers only
target Neovim.

I think Neovim also has a pluggable engine, so IDE vim emulators can simply
include that portion rather than implementing the functionality per platform.

~~~
criddell
Can you name a couple of extensions that somebody considering Neovim should
look at?

~~~
fmoralesc
neomake (async execution of tasks like compiling, linting and syntax checking)
and deoplete (for async autocompletion).

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mikekchar
I was surprised to learn that vim started out on the Amiga. Back in those days
I was using DME, by a certain Matt Dillon (of Dragonfly BSD fame, not the
actor ;-) ). At the time it was the only editor that could drag me away from
Emacs. Ironic that Vim later seduced me away from Emacs again...

~~~
mkonecny
Cooincidental, not ironic.

~~~
mikekchar
Ironic in the sense that I could have been using vim the entire time.

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bagrow
Anybody using a neovim MacOS app [1]? I'm a huge vim user, but mostly via
MacVim [2].

[1] [https://github.com/rogual/neovim-dot-
app](https://github.com/rogual/neovim-dot-app)

[2] [https://github.com/macvim-dev/macvim](https://github.com/macvim-
dev/macvim)

~~~
owaislone
I've been very happy with neovim.app but recently switched to VimR. VimR
switched to neovim some time ago. Haven't noticed any issues as compared to
neovim.app. Both work pretty much the same for me as I don't use VimR's
features.

~~~
mikewhy
Been hearing about VimR, I should really check it out.

I've used both Neovim.app and neovim-qt, but for reasons I've forgot, always
end up back with MacVim.

------
greyman
I don't know if I am too old or just think differently than vim enthusiasts,
but I somehow couldn't bring myself to like vim. Of course that's might be
since I can't find motivation to dig into it further. As a developer I use it
almost daily when doing something on the server, like editing some config
etc., but I somehow always prefer a software, where you do things intuitively
without needing to first learn a shortcut for everything. I just prefer Visual
Studio or Visual Studio Code from Microsoft when developing code, accepting
that I must use mouse and the editing process might take slightly longer.
Also, as awkward as it might sound, visually vim looks a bit ugly to me and I
never could get fully over it. :-)

~~~
TeMPOraL
> _but I somehow always prefer a software, where you do things intuitively
> without needing to first learn a shortcut for everything._

As the quote goes, "The only "intuitive" interface is the nipple. After that
it's all learned."

The word you're looking for is "different". Vim (and Emacs) have _different_
shortcuts than what you're used to from Windows. That's because they're _much
older_. Vi and Emacs actually _predate_ those "intuitive" shortcuts of yours.

And like with many things our industry standardized on these days, just
because it's popular, doesn't mean it's not utter shit.

~~~
dorfsmay
> "The only "intuitive" interface is the nipple. After that it's all learned."

I did not know this saying, thanks. This explains why I cannot work on a GUI
without a track point!

~~~
a3n
I hate those things! I've never been able to get the desired effect, except
almost by accident, just like everything else in life that looks like those
things. Total mystery.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Like with everything worthwhile, it takes training :).

I used to scorn trackpoints until my friend told me he's very fond of them -
that convinced me to give it a try. They're not bad. Play with one for 5
minutes (to the clock), and you'll be liking them more than touchpads :).

------
zeveb
> _Bram admitted to using other editors on rare occasions, and said he always
> misses the dot (.) command, which repeats a change several times in
> different positions, and the ability to record and replay a sequence of
> commands._

> _“Just a simple ‘change this text into that text’ can be very laborious
> without a repeat command,” he said. “I haven’t seen another editor that
> provides this feature.”_

Note that emacs has had the repeat command since version 20.3, released 19
August 1998[2]. I suppose that means he's not used it since then …

[1]
[https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_mono/efaq.htm...](https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_mono/efaq.html#index-
Repeating-commands-many-times)

[2]
[https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/EmacsReleaseDates](https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/EmacsReleaseDates)

~~~
to3m
Have you used vim? . is much closer to running a keyboard macro than it is to
C-x z - only you don't have to record anything ahead of time, nor necessarily
even realise until afterwards that you might want to reuse what you've just
done. There's no precise equivalent in emacs. It's described here:
[http://vim.wikia.com/wiki/Repeat_last_change](http://vim.wikia.com/wiki/Repeat_last_change)

C-x z is lame by comparison. Like, suppose you just typed in M-d h e l l o,
and you press C-x z. It repeats the last command: self-insert-command. So you
get an additional o. Thanks, Emacs!

More comedy: after you move the cursor, perhaps planning to use C-x z to
insert another o elsewhere in the document, C-x z now replays the last cursor
movement command.

(None of this is illogical, it's simply that C-x z is not, probably, very
useful for editing text.)

With vim, on the other hand, pressing . would replay the word deletion,
followed by the insertion of "hello". And you can use other motion commands to
move about the file before repeating it again, allowing you to perform this
operation in multiple places.

~~~
akacase
[https://github.com/wyrickre/dot-mode](https://github.com/wyrickre/dot-mode),
elisp is pretty awesome if you utilize cl-lib and eieio.

------
clishem
No, this is just a clickbait article.

~~~
laktak
I found the article on vim.org:

> Nice article about Vim on hostingadvice.com

> Releasing version 8.0 and getting close to the 25th birthday inspired the
> writing of this article. It contains links to relevant info and can be used
> to convince a friend to start using Vim. (Bram Moolenaar)

------
throwaw12ay
So, what does he think about Emacs?

~~~
chappi42
There is an answer in the video at 1:06:11. "In some way it's actually nice to
have competitor [he is speaking about Neovim] and Emacs has disappeared, so..
[I think, he smiles at this point]".

------
ghostly_s
Does anyone know what vim plugin or feature is pictured in the illustration?
The code outline on the right side?

~~~
ward
Looks like tagbar to me
[https://github.com/majutsushi/tagbar](https://github.com/majutsushi/tagbar)

------
red2awn
Too bad most of the new features are already in Neovim.

~~~
kerny
Why is it bad? Competition is always a good thing, and I'm glad that Neovim
urged Braam to improve Vim as well.

Personally, I'll rather use Vim as it focuses on stability and long-term
compatibility. I have a huge respect for Braam for maintaining the project for
so long. On the other hand, some of the Neovim's promises are just that, big
dreams. Development on Neovim has slowed down and if you look at their git
history, you'll see most of their commits are actually upstream patches taken
from Vim.

I also see a lot of hate towards Vim source code and code styling, which is
not that bad and I actually prefer it to Neovim's two spaces per indentation
style.

------
censored_again
Wow, hundreds of developers and 7 newsletters!1!! has Netcraft already
confirmed that Vim is obsolete?

~~~
owaislone
Just past month and that too after Neovim lit a fire under Vim. The difference
would be much bigger if you check for a period of last 2 years or so.

Neovim:
[https://github.com/neovim/neovim/pulse/monthly](https://github.com/neovim/neovim/pulse/monthly)

Vim:
[https://github.com/vim/vim/pulse/monthly](https://github.com/vim/vim/pulse/monthly)

I don't know why people feel emotional about Vim. Neovim is just Vim with a
breath of fresh air.

