Vim Creator Bram Moolenaar Interview
The Californer/10200547

SAN FRANCISCO - Californer -- We had a great talk with Bram Moolenaar, a Dutch computer programmer and an active member of the open-source software community. Bram is the original author, maintainer, release manager, and benevolent dictator for life of Vim, a vi-derivative text editor that is very popular among programmers and power users.

The Interview

Evrone: Looking back in time, what did working on Vim mean to you personally?

Bram: An awful lot. I have always liked creating things, but quite often, once something is finished I wonder what to do with it.  With Vim I can not only use it myself but by making it available publicly very many people can enjoy it. It has made my name known in the world and indirectly got me a job. These days, now that I am retired, it gives me something interesting, joyful, and useful to do. Vim is a very important part of my life.

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Evrone: In your opinion, is software development closer to art or science? Does it allow deviations from traditional techniques or do you have to strictly follow the main direction?

Bram: I do not see much science in software development. Science implies there is proof that something is true. In software, there are a lot of opinions and there is experience, but is there any proof that one programming language is better than another? Is there proof that object-oriented programming results in better productivity? Most proofs are about performance measurements, and there are statistics, but hardly any relation to what language a program was written in or what tools were used. It's not art either, since the main goal is that software works well, not that it looks nice.  It's much more of a craft. And a craftsman uses whatever tools he thinks will get the best result, no matter if they are what everybody else is using or something different. And a good craftsman makes his own tools when needed.

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Enjoy the full interview here!

We're grateful for the opportunity we had to interview Bram and learn from his valuable experiences and years of expertise.

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