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Comment by aspyct | Hacker News Reader

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.

Thanks Bram, have a good afterlife.

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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…

Thank you Mr. Moolenaar.

Yeah, relate. It shows you that with some good software, you can make an impact.

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.

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