Bram had been spending over 30 years on Vim; and not just "the occasional patch/bugfix", but significant amounts, and almost every single day for some years.
The number of people who spent that much time working on Open Source is very small, and the number of people who have spent that much time purely in their spare time is smaller still. In fact, I don't really know of anyone who even comes close to Bram.
The number of people who spent this much time volunteering for anything is very small.
Bram's effort on Vim was phenomenal and exceptional by any standard.
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I only met Bram in person once, in 2014, when he talked about Zimbu[1]; at some point I must have given a bit of a skeptical look, and he promptly looked at me and asked "oh, you don't agree? Why not?" It was a nice talk with lots of "audience engagement" like this. We spent some time talking during the rest of the day and the next day; we discussed and joked about lots of things; I don't recall talking much about Vim: it just didn't come up. I found him a very friendly, warm, and likeable person.
Sven Guckes (who passed away last year) did organize a little "Ask Me Anything" type workshop with Bram, and I discovered Bram struggled remembering the ins-and-outs of some of the lesser used Vim features just as much as the rest of us :-)
I don't know if Bram's family has this thread or is reading it, but the extent to which his work has impacted the software development community is enormous.
Vim was one of the first pieces of software I learned when I switched to Linux in college. It was tricky at first, then it delighted me to no end. It remains a daily part of my life nearly 20 years later, and I'm still learning more about it every single year.
I can't count the number of times I wish I could drop out of insert mode in normal web browser text boxes.
Bram's insistence of donating his earnings to helping the children of Uganda is also incredibly selfless, and it's impossible to mention him without bringing this up [1].
We'll miss you Bram. We'll be learning from you for decades to come.
> and the number of people who have spent that much time purely in their spare time (i.e. not as part of their job, like Torvalds or van Rossum) is smaller still.
I agree, but the fact that there's a non-zero amount of people doing it shouldn't be overlooked. For example maintainer of qutebrowser (who also happen to be in pytest core team) and apart from a teaching job at an university a couple of months per year, he's working full time on OSS. The main characteristics they share (at least those I met) seem to be a deep love for the craft, a deep love for people, and be virtually unfazed by the amount of money they can make if they weren't doing that.
The number of people who spent that much time working on Open Source is very small, and the number of people who have spent that much time purely in their spare time is smaller still. In fact, I don't really know of anyone who even comes close to Bram.
The number of people who spent this much time volunteering for anything is very small.
Bram's effort on Vim was phenomenal and exceptional by any standard.
---
I only met Bram in person once, in 2014, when he talked about Zimbu[1]; at some point I must have given a bit of a skeptical look, and he promptly looked at me and asked "oh, you don't agree? Why not?" It was a nice talk with lots of "audience engagement" like this. We spent some time talking during the rest of the day and the next day; we discussed and joked about lots of things; I don't recall talking much about Vim: it just didn't come up. I found him a very friendly, warm, and likeable person.
Sven Guckes (who passed away last year) did organize a little "Ask Me Anything" type workshop with Bram, and I discovered Bram struggled remembering the ins-and-outs of some of the lesser used Vim features just as much as the rest of us :-)
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_O-QdG2X1Lw)