Vim Creator Bram Moolenaar's Forgotten Programming Language, Zimbu (2023)
4 hours ago
- #legacy
- #vim
- #programming
- Bram Moolenaar, creator of Vim, also designed his own programming language called Zimbu.
- Zimbu aimed to reduce clutter in code by making curly braces and semicolons optional, and using capitalization rules to avoid conflicts.
- The language featured both static and dynamic typing, garbage collection, multi-threading, and object-oriented programming with mixins.
- Zimbu was intended to be portable, even for web development, with tools to compile code for servers and clients.
- Despite its innovative features, Zimbu had very few users and development appears to have stalled, with its website now offline.
- Moolenaar's work on Zimbu reflects his dedication to improving programmer productivity and his passion for language design.