I take slight issue with the joke around "postmodern". Modernism and postmodernism are actual things. Modern means a new way to do something without much influence from the older ways. Postmodern means looking at multiple ways something has been done over time then extracting and combining a sets of the good ways from any time and tradition into a new, workable whole.
Saying something is postmodern because it came out after something modern cheapens the word.
What I really want from another Vim replacement is why it's better than neovim, not jokes about usurping Vim at the expense of the English language. I think that's presumptuous at best and I don't find it very funny to claim to be better because it's newer.
>Saying something is postmodern because it came out after something modern cheapens the word.
Well,
(a) it's meant as a joke.
(b) it's not such a great word for us to care about "cheapening" it. It's not like "postmodern" is a word loaded with valor, like "freedom" or "justice" or some such for example.
(c) Actually neither modernism nor postmodernism mean what you wrote as they are canonically defined. Modernism is a specific early to mid 20th century movement in arts, design, literature and so on, and postmodernism is another one (mid to late 20th century, the term started from architectural critique and moved to philosophy and aesthetic discourse to general use), with a quite specific context and history.
Do you have sources to back up those definitions? The Oxford dictionary on my iPhone don’t really agree with your assessment and Wikipedia considers postmodern a specific period in time (mid to late 19 hundreds)
"Postmodernism is generally defined by an attitude of skepticism, irony, or rejection toward what it describes as the grand narratives and ideologies associated with modernism, often criticizing Enlightenment rationality and focusing on the role of ideology in maintaining political or economic power. Postmodern thinkers frequently describe knowledge claims and value systems as contingent or socially-conditioned, framing them as products of political, historical, or cultural discourses and hierarchies. Common targets of postmodern criticism include universalist ideas of objective reality, morality, truth, human nature, reason, science, language, and social progress. Accordingly, postmodern thought is broadly characterized by tendencies to self-consciousness, self-referentiality, epistemological and moral relativism, pluralism, and irreverence."
and later
"Postmodernism is an intellectual stance or mode of discourse[1][2] defined by an attitude of skepticism toward what it describes as the grand narratives and ideologies of modernism, as well as opposition to epistemic certainty and the stability of meaning.[3] It questions or criticizes viewpoints associated with Enlightenment rationality dating back to the 17th century,[4] and is characterized by irony, eclecticism, and its rejection of the "universal validity" of binary oppositions, stable identity, hierarchy, and categorization."
It's fairly funny to say that as a joke in isolation. It's not funny IMO to put the word in the hype line of the project and then to later define that as a joke in the FAQ.
Saying something is postmodern because it came out after something modern cheapens the word.
What I really want from another Vim replacement is why it's better than neovim, not jokes about usurping Vim at the expense of the English language. I think that's presumptuous at best and I don't find it very funny to claim to be better because it's newer.