Coding world mourns Vim creator as Uganda misses a friend

The coding world mourns the Dutch-born software developer Bram Moolenaar of Vim text editor who also founded International Child Care Fund Holland (ICCF) after visiting Uganda in 1993.

Bram, who passed on at 62, is behind Vim text editor, probably one of the most widely used Linux programs of all time.

Vim was the default text editor included with most Linux distributions. As such, Bram was the person whose code has probably touched more people than any other Linux tool except for the kernel itself — which nobody except programmers directly interact with anyway.

Vim has been “charityware.” If you open the editor without specifying a file, in the opening text, it displays the following message:

~                        Help poor children in Uganda!
~                type  :help iccf<enter>       for information</enter>

ICCF being referred to is the NGO earlier mentioned that supports a school for AIDS orphans at the Kibaale Community Centre. The ICCF sends some 99.5 percent of its income to Kibaale. Moolenaar last visited the school in 2020, very shortly before the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic.

From July 2006 until September 2021, Moolenaar was employed by Google, working in the Zürich office on Google Calendar. He spent part of his time maintaining Vim.

As an IT firm, VINAStech mourns this great Software Engineer!

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