The vi Editor Turns 50: Interview with Bill Joy (1984)

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Really, what started it all was that we got some ADM-3As to do screen editing. I remember right after Carter was 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. That dates it: it was probably ’76. It was really a consequence of our initial frustration with Pascal. It went on from there. I stopped working on it whenever they made the reference cards - ’78-’79 - and I really haven’t worked on it for five years.

Which would be November 6, 1976.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4940918

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10145982

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20484547

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26085987

An Introduction to Display Editing with Vi

https://docs-archive.freebsd.org/44doc/usd/12.vi/paper.pdf

In particular:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4947039

I've got the same material (and more) on my personal website at: http://www.coulouris.net/cs_history/em_story/ There's complete source code for 'em' there too.

George Coulouris

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