The Register's Liam Proven reports that David Chisnall, a CHERI Project researcher and long-time Vim user, tried NeoVim and found it had overwritten the file Vim uses for persistent undo. Chisnall had customized where that history was stored, and despite a warning, the fork replaced it. He lost records of more than a decade of changes, even though Vim had preserved that undo history across major upgrades for about 20 years.
Marcin Wichary used the episode to revisit Jef Raskin's three laws of interface design from The Humane Interface. Raskin's first rule is that a computer must not harm a user's work, and must not allow that work to come to harm through inaction. The second says a computer should not waste your time or require more work than strictly necessary. The third says an interface is humane if it is responsive to human needs and considerate of human frailties. The Register argues these rules are still not widely followed, including in the free and open source world.
The article notes that NeoVim fans reacted angrily, and that NeoVim recently removed a promotional quote from DHH after a heated debate. It also connects the incident to a broader critique: Unix and C culture has often celebrated mastering difficult tools rather than protecting users. For The Register, the lesson is that developers have a duty of care, and letting software destroy user data violates Raskin's first law.