I'm curious about the origins of Vi. Specifically, what programming language or system was it originally developed with? I've heard some mentions of Ex and Unix, but I'm not entirely sure how they all connect. Any insights?
2 Answers
Unix, where Vi has its roots, was primarily developed in the C programming language. There's an interesting story about Dennis Ritchie working on it—he once accidentally crashed a machine and had to tell students it was his fault. Classic computer science history! So yes, Vi was born from C and Unix.
Vi is a visual mode for the Ex line editor, which was created by Bill Joy, the same person who co-founded Sun Microsystems. It's likely that the first version of Vi was actually written in Ex. If you want to dig deeper, Ex itself probably came from Ed, an older text editor that predated Unix and was often programmed with punch cards. Pretty wild to think about the roots of our modern tools!
I think the original editor that Dennis Ritchie used before Vi was more likely Ed. It was one of the early Unix text editors, so it makes sense.