The Beautiful Origins of the Vim Text Editor

I was in London last week and I happeneed to walk by wife's alma mater, Queen Mary University of London. I stopped to grab a cup of coffee and I read a tweet saying that Bram Moolenaar, the creator of Vim, had passed.

To be honest, with a new family member keeping me busy at home, and a new course on MIPS assembler that I'm recording for the school, I am finding very difficult to keep up with the news. So, I confess that I probably received the news of Bram's passing almost a week too late.

I did not know Bram personally, and I am far from being a Vim connoisseur, but the fact that I was in one of Queen Mary's buildings forced me to stop for a moment and reflect on how that place was connected to the long and vibrant history of Vim.

Queen Mary University was an important place in the history of the Vim editor. It was here that, in 1973, the first UNIX system of the UK was installed, and it was also here that professor George Coulouris developed an editor called em. The creation of em ended up snowballing into the development of vi and many other vi clones after that.