Tribute to Bram Moolenaar, creator of Vim, the strongest editor in the universe

On August 5th, the family of Bram Moolenaar, the BDFL of the Vim project and the father of Vim, issued an obituary, bringing sad news to developers all over the world - it is with a heavy heart that we inform you that in the past few weeks Bram Moolenaar Passed away on August 3, 2023 at the age of 62 due to a rapidly deteriorating condition.

Anyone who has used Vim knows the generosity of Moolenaar. Decades ago, Moolenaar first proposed the concept of charity software and actively promoted it to the world. To this day, Vim users can still view the license by typing the command :helpUganda or :helpICCF. Every Vim user and sponsor who registers and donates at least €10 will have the opportunity to vote for new features.

In his founding license, Moolenaar wrote: "Vim is charity software, which you may use and copy freely."

Just on February 20 last year, Sven Guckes, an important maintainer of the Vim project, passed away in Berlin. At that time, Moolenaar issued an email, expressing his regret for this bosom friend, and announced that he would dedicate the next important version 9.0 of Vim to him.

Sadly, Moolenaar passed away this year along with friends, which is a great loss to the entire development community. Only a month ago, Moolenaar was constantly updating and modifying Vim. These two deaths have left the Vim community in mourning, with key maintainers and founders leaving a void that is hard to fill.

"One of a kind" editor

Born in the Netherlands in 1961, Bram Moolenaar graduated from Delft University of Technology with a degree in electrical engineering at the age of 24. In 1988, Bram Moolenaar purchased an Amiga computer. Because he was accustomed to using Vi for editing, he looked for a Vi-like program on the Amiga.

Moolenaar tried many "clone" versions of Vi, but none met his requirements; so he chose the best of them and set about improving them. Initially, Moolenaar's main goal was to make it fully functional with Vi. He then gradually added additional features, such as multi-level undo.

In 1988, Moolenaar released a version of Vim (then called "ViIMitation") on the Amiga's public domain disk collection (made by Fred Fish). After the release, it received a positive response, and gradually people began to send patches to Moolenaar, and there were efforts to port Vim to other platforms, such as MS-DOS and Unix.

At first, Vim was only used by Moolenaar himself. After a while, he felt that Vim was also useful for other people, so he shared it all over the world. Since then, Moolenaar has worked harder to adapt the program to more developers. He once said: "It's fun to create something that works. Also, it's really inspiring to have a lot of great co-authors and power users."

So Moolenaar kept adding more features, and until version 1.22, Vim already included more features than Vi. As a result, Moolenaar decided to change its name from "ViIMitation" to "ViIMproved". The code has been redesigned and extended so many times over time that little of the original "clone" version of Vi has survived.

Moolenaar once summarized the advantages of Vim as:

Unlimited line length, NUL bytes allowed: Any file can be edited, including binary files.
Multi-Level Undo and Redo: No need to worry about breaking files when Caps Lock is accidentally turned on.
Multi-Window and Buffer: Edit multiple files at the same time, copy text between them.
Syntax highlighting: Quickly understand the structure of text and spot errors.
Command-line history and auto-completion: correct typos, recall old commands, and quickly enter long filenames.
Deleting and inserting rectangular text areas: Editing tables.
Error message parsing: run the compiler and immediately jump to where the error was found.
Hyperlinked Online Help: Find comprehensive documentation for any command and jump to related topics.
Powerful scripting language: add your own extended functions.

Vim has become an integral part of many programmers' lives. Because of this, many netizens posted eulogies on social platforms. Even those who insisted that their editor of choice was a model of perfection in one of the original "holy wars" in the editor world - the Emacs-Vi rivalry - lamented the passing of such a "genius" as Moolenaar.

The famous "charity software"

As an open source software, Vim allows users to use and spread freely. Still, many people who use Vim regularly would like to contribute back to Moolenaar's work in some way. So he came up with the idea of charity software.

The basic idea of Charityware is to encourage everyone who uses Vim to donate to charity. Therefore, using Vim is free, but if a user believes that the use of Vim is worth paying, they can choose to donate these costs to charity.

After Moolenaar was conceived, he began to select a suitable charity, the International Children's Care Foundation of the Netherlands (ICCFHolland).

In 1994, Moolenaar volunteered for a project in southern Uganda, a region heavily affected by AIDS, with an estimated 10 to 30 percent of adults infected. In many families the parents passed away, leaving only their children. The program helps these needy children in a number of ways, finding them a new home, ensuring they receive an education, and receiving individualized care.

After Moolenaar returned from Uganda, his mind was still on that place. He decided to continue supporting the project through fundraising. So he started calling on Vim users to consider donating to orphans in Uganda. He also created an adoption program where users can provide financial support for a child so that the child can be helped in the long term. Since they only work with volunteers and send funds directly to projects, nearly all of the money raised actually goes to Uganda.

Moolenaar's efforts are starting to pay off, ICCF fundraising is increasing, and Vim is starting to win multiple awards and is considered one of the most popular text editors.

LinuxJournal readers voted Vim as their favorite text editor between 2001 and 2005.

Vim was named a finalist for the LinuxWorld "Editor's Choice" award in 1999. The award was announced by Vim developer Wichert Akkerman at the LinuxWorld conference.

At the LinuxWorld Expo in New York in February 2000, Vim was nominated for a Slashdot Beanie Award in the "Open Source Text Editor" category.

However, for Moolenaar, he is most proud of receiving an award from the Netherlands Unix Users Group (NLUUG) in 2008. NLUUG is a Unix user organization in the Netherlands, and this year they turned 40 years old. Previous recipients of the award also include Guidovan Rossum, the father of Python, and Piet Beertema, a Dutch internet pioneer. Moolenaar expressed his joy for the award on his personal homepage.

Moolenaar is a surname of Dutch origin. It refers to a career in operating a mill (usually a windmill). In the past, there were many windmills in the Netherlands, and they were used to pump water from the bay fields, grind flour, and saw wood. Relying on the power of the wind, the land passed through a period of prosperity.

However, time keeps moving forward, and the light of today's Dutch windmills is gradually dimmed, replaced by the silhouette of modern technology. In this age of intelligence, Moolenaar shows another landscape through his code. As his name suggests - he is the one who controls the "windmill" of the digital age, and Moolenaar's legacy is therefore worthy of being passed on.

Fortunately, the Vim project will continue to be run by open source developers.

After hearing the news of Moolenaar's death, Christian Brabandt, a long-time contributor to the project, published a post in which he expressed his shock and sadness at the incident and announced that he would continue to advance the project with other contributors.

Tribute to Bram Moolenaar, creator of Vim, the strongest editor in the universe

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