kindaVim

it is still a paid app, but the source is out there for everyone to see. if people want to go through the trouble of compiling it themselves, they can. else they can subscribe for the price of a cup of coffee a month. less time explaining that kV doesn't steal data, or why it is closed source. more time to work on the Vim moves.

how did i accomplish this? worked my ass off 7 days a week for 1.5 years to build this awesome product. also got insulted on reddit :p

the 6 subscriptions bring a whopping $USD14.95 a month (probably -$USD20 in bank fees), enough for the next 6 coffees.

the most boring part of the stable release was to build and created automated tests for the license/subscription within the app. i actually fucked it up and people were able to use kV without restriction for another 15 days LMAO.

the core engines are stable, but of course Vim is many, many moves. so the app is constantly updated with new moves, requests, features, etc.

after 6 months non stop, and a couple of YouTube videos showcasing kindaVim (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC3ZP3QFMhNn3ivJgqoEW4Ug) i've released a beta. one reason for sure was to get people to use and report bugs. one reason was because the YT videos got some people interested. good fun.

i spent the last 6 months learning Swift, Xcode and the various macOS platform APIs by building libraries and Workflows for Alfred. i've been building many over the past few years, but using mostly PHP and bash/zsh. this time i've rewritten the libraries, and some workflows, in Swift. timing was good as macOS was getting rid of several interpreters installed by default, including the PHP one.

October was spent opening Xcode for the first time, and typing some Swift for the first time. also reading macOS API docs... for the first time. took about 3 weeks to get the proof of concept done. it was clear by that time that i needed several Vim engines, and that i had to build them all for scratch.

tried a couple of tools but was not very happy with what i found. i needed something that allowed me to use Vim moves everywhere. that is in UI like dropdown, lists, tables, but also in any input fields, like native apps, browsers, Electron apps, etc.