from Hacker News

The State of Vim

by yla92 on 1/11/25, 11:42 AM with 46 comments

• by jgb1984 on 1/11/25, 1:00 PM

  As a long time (20+ years) vim user the passing of Bram came as a shock. But it has become clear to me that the project is in safe hands, and I've seen slow but steady progress, continuing the tradition of stability that Bram always safeguarded for 3 decades.

  I do try out neovim from time to time, but I don't care for Lua (vimscript is easier to read and less verbose for .vimrc), I don't need an LSP and I found treesitter often buggy and slow.

  So I'm sticking with vim, here's to another few decades more, thank you to all maintainers!

• by JetSetIlly on 1/11/25, 12:53 PM

  I'm happy with this "maintenance mode" tag. Personally speaking, so long as it continues to get security fixes and the build system is kept working, I'm a happy user.

• by ctenb on 1/11/25, 12:57 PM

  Vim in maintainance mode makes a lot of sense to me. For larger features and refactors it makes more sense to turn to neovim, which has already undergone a lot of modernization work, at times breaking with old vim.

• by mitch-crn on 1/11/25, 1:39 PM

  I started with vi, a long time ago. I do not remember when I switched, but it was most likely when I start using Linux. I will stay with it until I die at this point. http://crn.hopto.org/unix/#vim

• by keernan on 1/14/25, 5:20 PM

  >>When catastrophic fires occur, experts often blame the so-called wildland-urban interface, the vulnerable region on the perimeter of cities and suburbs where an abundance of vegetation in rugged terrain is susceptible to burning.

  >>Yet the fire disasters that we’re seeing today are less wildland fires than urban fires, Cohen said. Shifting this understanding could lead to more effective prevention strategies.

  >>“The assumption is continually made that it’s the big flames” that cause widespread community destruction, he said, “and yet the wildfire actually only initiates community ignitions largely with lofted burning embers.”

  >>Experts attribute widespread devastation to wind-driven embers igniting spot fires two to three miles ahead of the established fire. Maps of the Eaton fire show seemingly random ignitions across Altadena.

  >>“When you study the destruction in Pacific Palisades and Altadena, note what didn’t burn — unconsumed tree canopies adjacent to totally destroyed homes,” he said. “The sequence of destruction is commonly assumed to occur in some kind of organized spreading flame front — a tsunami of super-heated gases — but it doesn’t happen that way.

  >>“In high-density development, scattered burning homes spread to their neighbors and so on. Ignitions downwind and across streets are typically from showers of burning embers from burning structures.”

  >>This fundamental misunderstanding has likewise led to a misunderstanding of prevention. No longer is it a matter of preventing wildfires but instead preventing points of ignition within communities by employing “home-hardening” strategies — proper landscaping, fire-resistant siding — and enjoining neighbors in collective efforts such as brush clearing.

  >>“If we think it’s wildfire, then we tend to maintain wildfire as the principal problem — with wildfire control as the solution,” Cohen said. “However, there is no evidence to suggest wildfire control is a reliable approach during the extreme wildfire conditions when community disasters occur.”

• by em-bee on 1/11/25, 6:46 PM

  i don't understand the issues with the github account. they tried to supersede the ownership of the organization by declaring the owner dead which would have deactivated the account. but if the family has full access to the account, couldn't they just assign a new owner to the organization?

• by genieyclo on 1/11/25, 12:56 PM

  omg, I’ve used vim everyday for more than 15 years and did not know Bram died. RIP

• by amelius on 1/11/25, 1:38 PM

  Big fan of Vim. One thing I wish they fixed is the UX around opening a file twice.

• by 1vuio0pswjnm7 on 1/11/25, 5:37 PM

  On Linux, I can compile a static vim 4.6 (1997 mar 13) with size of 514K

  If I compile static vim 9.1 (2024 jan 02) I get size of 3.7M

  When I compile a static nvi, I get a size of 575K. And the resulting binary segfaults

  On NetBSD I use nvi but for Linux I am using vim 4.6

• by blame-troi on 1/11/25, 12:47 PM

  Bram's passing and the split into basically two code bases (Vim, Neovim) and three customization languages pushed me over to Emacs. I switched back and forth for years, as many others do, but I didn't want to deal with having to use one or the other depending on scripting language.

  [edit: grammar]