A Markdown acolyte came to Master Wq to demonstrate his Vim
plugin.
"See, master," he said, "I have nearly finished the Vim
macros that translate Markdown into HTML. My functions
interweave, my parser is a paragon of efficiency, and the
results nearly flawless. I daresay I have mastered
Vimscript, and my work will validate Vim as a modern editor
for the enlightened developer! Have I done rightly?"
Master Wq read the acolyte’s code for several minutes
without saying anything. Then he opened a Markdown document,
and typed:
:%!markdown HTML filled the buffer instantly. The acolyte
began to cry.
Master Wq and the Unix master An old Unix master came to
Master Wq. "I am troubled, Wq. You teach the way of Vim. vi
is holy but Vim is not; its code sprawls, its features crowd
memory; its binaries are vast, its behavior inconsistent.
This is not the way of Unix. I fear you mislead your
students. What can be done?"
Master Wq nodded. "You are right," he said. "Vim is broken.
Let us fix it. Shall we begin?"
The old Unix master agreed, and opened a shell. He typed:
$ vi vim.c He began to code. Master Wq watched for a while
and then asked him, "Which implementation of vi are you
using? Nvi? Vim? Elvis?"
"I don’t know," said the Unix master. "It doesn’t matter."
Master Wq nodded. The Unix master sat stunned for a moment
and closed his document unsaved.
