Mike Levin

I am making the very unusual decision to adopt VI as my text editor. Actually, it’s VIM, and when I researched which text editor I was going to use as I moved over to the Mac, I went to the Wikipedia page on OS X text editors, figuring I’d get a WYSIWYG one like Edit Plus, which I use on Windows. I saw VI and VIM there, making me realize that just like I want to consolidate all my programming (server-side and client-side) on the prolific JavaScript, so too should I consolidate all my text editing on one prolific editor. So I drilled-down on the VIM link, and imagine my surprise that the first version (of Vi IMproved) was first created for the Amiga Computer in 1991. Now this is when I was attending the Commodore shareholder meetings in the difficult-to-access Lyford Cay Club in the Bahamas, lecturing Irving Gould and Mehdi Ali on what they had to do for the Amgia (and Commodore) to survive. Here I am nearly 20 years later (wow!), choosing my Mac text editor and by chance selecting one made for the Amiga platform in that very year. The world is full of tiny coincidences like this that normally go unseen. I’m glad I saw this one. VIM for the Mac, here I come! Yeah, that’ll help me perfect my VI skills for sure. Need to make sure I swith to VIM on my subnotebook and office laptop as well. Good discipline exercise. Oh yeah… and I don’t even need to go find it. It’s already on OS X, because of the underlying Unix operating system. Just open a terminal and type vi. Voila!

I am making the very unusual decision to adopt VI as my text editor. Actually, it’s VIM, and when I researched which text editor I was going to use as I moved over to the Mac, I went to the Wikipedia page on OS X text editors, figuring I’d get a WYSIWYG one like Edit Plus, which I use on Windows.

I saw VI and VIM there, making me realize that just like I want to consolidate all my programming (server-side and client-side) on the prolific JavaScript, so too should I consolidate all my text editing on one prolific editor. So I drilled-down on the VIM link, and imagine my surprise that the first version (of Vi IMproved) was first created for the Amiga Computer in 1991. Now this is when I was attending the Commodore shareholder meetings in the difficult-to-access Lyford Cay Club in the Bahamas, lecturing Irving Gould and Mehdi Ali on what they had to do for the Amgia (and Commodore) to survive.

Here I am nearly 20 years later (wow!), choosing my Mac text editor and by chance selecting one made for the Amiga platform in that very year. The world is full of tiny coincidences like this that normally go unseen. I’m glad I saw this one. VIM for the Mac, here I come! Yeah, that’ll help me perfect my VI skills for sure. Need to make sure I swith to VIM on my subnotebook and office laptop as well. Good discipline exercise.

Oh yeah… and I don’t even need to go find it. It’s already on OS X, because of the underlying Unix operating system. Just open a terminal and type vi. Voila!