news: Bram

_posts/2023-08-09-bram.md

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+---
+layout: newsletter
+title: "Vim Boss"
+category: newsletter
+permalink: /news/2023/08
+---
+
+Bram is one of my heroes. That's literal and recursive: when I say it,
+internally I check before making a frivolous claim, which is a feature of this
+particular role-model; "What would Bram do?" is a fixture in me which informs my
+choices.
+
+Those who studied `vim_dev` and the Vim source and docs, accumulated treasure
+from a stream of copious messages and spare impressions. But also from what he
+omitted: he never appealed to sensationalism or personal judgements.
+
+Even when treated rudely, Bram usually responded only to advance his
+understanding of a problem to solve. Bram was one of those humans quietly
+providing deep value to the universe, but there was no parade and little
+celebrity.
+
+Bram was anchored to reality, directly interested in results and adjusting what
+produced them. The "Problem/Solution" mantra in his commit messages is simple
+yet profoundly effective. He used that approach to help [people in
+Uganda](https://www.moolenaar.net/albums.html), managing resources directly
+instead of abstractly.
+
+Bram's principles (as I observed them) extended beyond mere technical
+craftsmanship. The ability to adopt a position of *modesty* is a mind-trick that
+channels an endeavor through a "narrow waist", a voluntary constraint. That lens
+can create a more composable and powerful result. Plugins like
+[unimpaired](https://github.com/tpope/vim-unimpaired) riff on the theme. And
+this touches on a central point: the main utility—not ideology, but _utility_—of
+"lifestyle software" like Emacs and Vim, is that the ecosystem is alive, and has
+escape velocity, so its momentum is self-perpetuated.
+
+Neovim has always been intentionally positioned as a derivative of Vim, which
+means simultaneously it both continues and diverges from Vim. I'm convinced that
+[forks create energy](https://twitter.com/justinmk/status/1671916719143526400)
+rather than destroy it. So although we can't deliver Vim without Bram, we can
+continue some essential parts:
+
+- [Maintenance](https://neovim.io/doc/user/develop.html#design-maintain):
+  Experimentation is good, and the world needs creative destruction and playful
+  failures. But Neovim does not represent lust for the new ("neomania").
+- [Documentation](https://neovim.io/doc/user/develop.html#design-documented):
+  the habits of Vim documentation are obvious, this is one of the biggest gains
+  that Nvim acquired by building on vim.
+- Extensibility: Bram's own [Agide](http://www.agide.org) project aspired to
+  a similar sort of extensibility as Neovim:
+  > Agide is not a monolitic application. Separate tools can be plugged in. Thus
+  > you are not forced to use one editor. ... Each tool implements part of the
+  > plugin interface.
+- [Embedding](https://neovim.io/doc/user/develop.html#design-not): Vim's
+  [:help design-not](https://github.com/vim/vim/blob/531da5955e03afadb2f0cf72264fe8deb4bf430e/runtime/doc/develop.txt#L145-L153)
+  for most of its life proclaimed this tenet of Neovim:
+  > Vim is not a shell or an Operating System. ...  This should work the other way
+  > around: Use Vim as a component from a shell or in an IDE.
+
+And another thing: Bram didn't take himself too seriously. He had his own sense
+of humor.
+
+Neovim is a monument to Vim and Bram. We should be pragmatic, not dogmatic; we
+should remember what the goal is, and compare our actions to the results.
+
+---
+
+_— Justin M. Keyes_
+
+P.S. Jan van den Berg wrote [a nice post on Bram's legacy](https://j11g.com/2023/08/07/the-legacy-of-bram-moolenaar/).