Bill Joy

“That lack of programmability is probably what ultimately will doom vi. It can't extend its domain.”

“I think it killed the performance on a lot of the systems in the Labs for years because everyone had their own copy of it, but it wasn't being shared, and so they wasted huge amounts of memory back when memory was expensive.”

“I wish we hadn't used all the keys on the keyboard.”

“I think the Macintosh proves that everyone can have a bitmapped display.”

“Interleaf is very nice. I expect there to be a lot of competition for programs like that.”

“Document preparation systems will also require large screen displays.”

“So Chuck and I looked at that and we hacked on em for a while, and eventually we ripped the stuff out of em and put some of it into what was then called en, which was really ed with some em features.”

“I think the wonderful thing about vi is that it has such a good market share because we gave it away.”

“I think editors have to come out of a certain kind of community.”

“I got tired of people complaining that it was too hard to use UNIX because the editor was too complicated.”

“But no, I don't generally have trouble with spelling mistakes.”

“The fundamental problem with vi is that it doesn't have a mouse and therefore you've got all these commands.”

“Well, limbo is not a good place to be.”

“The point is that you want to have a system that is responsive.”

“The reason I use ed is that I don't want to lose what's on the screen.”

“Systems are going to get a lot more sophisticated.”

“I was surprised about vi going in, though, I didn't know it was in System V.”

“Bitmap display is media compatible with dot matrix or laser printers.”

“It is formatted, and I'm tired of using vi. I get really bored.”

“I remember right after Carter got elected, I was sitting in my apartment in Albany, CA, on a Saturday listening to people call Carter and ask stupid questions while I designed the screen editor.”