When I was a student a few decades ago, everybody I knew pronounced it as “vee-eye”. Then in the late nineties / early aughts, I heard the first people pronounced it as “vie” in a different city I had found employment in. It sounded odd to me, and it seemed to come from people who in fact didn’t use it much. But the pronounciation I was used to still applied, mostly.
Nowadays, I almost never talk about VI to anyone anymore, nor do I hear anyone say the name. It’s become mostly a typed thing for me. But - coincidence? - this week I heard three people talk about it (younger, non VI users) and they all said “vie”.
And now I’m watching this video from the reasonably famous and definitely not young and not VI newbie NCommander and he too says “vie” in the video.
I’m beginning to worry that I’m the one who’s been saying it wrong all this time because of my misguided college buddies and teachers way back when 🙂
So I’m curious: how do YOU say it? VEE-EYE or VIE?
I have used vanilla VI on real Unices (i.e. pre-Linux and pre-Minix). In fact, that’s the VI I learned VI with.
The first “better VI” I used was Elvis. Then VIM of course. But here’s the thing: even decades later, I still consider their extended features niceties rather than essentials. In other words, I’m still very happy to run vanilla VI to this day. The only thing from VI of yore I can’t really stand anymore is HJKL: I kind of need the arrows, and the ability to move in edit mode.