Article source: Qubits
It is almost impossible for any Linux user to bypass the command line, nor the Vim editor. As the most well-known text editor on GitHub, Vim's Star number is 2.6w, and its influence in the technical circle is evident.
GitHub：https://github.com/vim/vim
A few days ago, the father of Vim, Bram Moolenaar, had sad news: his close friend and one of the main maintainers of Vim, Sven Guckes , passed away.
Sven Guckes died of a brain tumor in Berlin on February 21 at the age of 55.
Bram Moolenaar decided to dedicate the next big version of Vim, 9.0 , to this dear friend.
Sven is not only Bram's friend, but also made a major contribution to the promotion of Vim, and even registered Vim's official homepage vim.org.
Vim Promoter
When Vim first came out, many programmers found it difficult to use. Even today, the threshold for getting started is still very high. Even how to use Vim on the Internet has become a joke.
There is often a "disdain chain" in the programmer circle, and those who use Vim despise those who use the graphical interface.
But Sven Guckes does not have this "elite thinking", but is committed to the promotion of Vim. Making it easier for others to use Vim has become his mission.
In 1994, when Sven was a student at the Free University of Berlin, he first came into contact with Vim, and he lamented that it was much easier to use than Vi.
Since then he has devoted himself to Vim, and thus has gained love. In the summer of 1994, Sven met a girl who was writing a dissertation. In the end Sven helped her finally write her thesis in Vim.
During the nineties, Sven was active on the Vim development team, and it was during this time that he formed a deep friendship with Bram Moolenaar.
Sven also registered the homepage domain vim.org that is still in use today.
Later, he gave birth to the "What is Vim?" idea, explained Vim in 6KB files, and helped write some guide documents for Vim versions.
In 2000, Sven approached O'Reilly, hoping to update Vim's content in Vi's books, but was rejected because O'Reilly didn't find it profitable.
But then the Vim team published tutorials that became so popular that O'Reilly later added Vim content.
For more than two decades, Sven has earned the nickname "Command Line Explainer" by attending various open source community conferences, tirelessly answering beginners' questions, and even helping other programmers with Vim problems on the train.
Not only that, he is also working on promoting various command line tools such as tmux, Mutt, etc.
Sven himself says that he hardly uses the graphical interface because he is more efficient at typing.
leave with a smile
At the end of 2021, Sven Guckes was diagnosed with a brain tumor, and there was nothing doctors could do.
At the end of January this year, he was transferred to a hospice.
Sven spent his last days with his friends, and they were still talking to the end of his life, and Sven laughed when he was done talking. Then Sven quieted down and gradually stopped breathing.
Sven Guckes' helpful character has helped him win a good reputation among programmers. Although many programmers have only met him once, they have a high evaluation of him.
Although some netizens have never met Sven, Vim has been with them for many years as an important productivity tool.
On the Hacker News forum, netizens paid tribute to Sven by quitting the Vim command.
R.I.P.
Reference link:
[1]https://groups.google.com/g/vim_announce/c/MJBKVd-xrEE/m/joVNaDgAAgAJ
[2]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30410077
[3]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30416558
[4]https://www.guckes.net/vim/