2026-03-31
This is far more nerdy, grumpy, and technical than some of my other ramblings. I will not be offended if you skip this one, as listening to clowns rant angrily about artificial intelligence and software is not for everyone.
I’ve been watching everything get caught up in the hype surrounding AI/LLMs. I’m not a tech person professionally, and despite such things only affecting my “toys” it still makes me sad. I’ve taken some small stances against this, with projects like the Filthy Human Hands License and my own obscure/bespoke/nonsensical computing choices.
Recently, the current maintainers of the vim project joined the ai bandwagon. They started pushing code through one of the theft-and-grift machines, and it appears they think this is acceptable for a project which has existed since 1992. The previous maintainer passed a few years ago, and had been acting as a guardian and custodian of the project for decades.
Watching someone’s life work get mulched by bots was appalling.
It was also something of a surprise. As a devotee of the Lindy Effect, I seek out tools which are stable, solid, and boring. Having a thirty-four year old editor get sucked into ai-hype was not on my bingo card.
For those who don’t understand this doomsday technobabbling, please assume I just told you that the inventor of the piano started using some industry-standard, socially acceptable cocaine, and has exciting new plans to forcibly upgrade all pianos have pointy barbs on the keys.
Building on the unexpected frustration of the entire ‘vimiverse’ deciding to go slop flavored, I’ve been poking at other options for my text mangling chores.
After test-driving a few of the fancy new offerings, I took a deep breath opened the OG of text editors, vi.
I assumed this was going to be an uncomfortably austere experience.
Much to my surprise, I found that I am really enjoying this simple-yet-powerful solution. As a friend put it, vi lives a bit closer to the shell. This means that I can solve my own problems (with poorly thought out bits of scripting) and this appeals to me.
I’m currently alternating between nvi and vi, with the latter being built into the operating system I use most. They recently stood up and said that they are not interested in being a part of the slopocalypse, which offers a bit of reassurance that I can continue being a curmudgeon about my tools.