“They had no concept of a duty of care to their users.”

Marcin Wichary, a UX designer and computer scientist, highlights the importance of Raskin's First Law in his post about his experience with vim and NeoVim, two text editors. The law states that "A program may not harm a user's data or, through inaction, allow a user's data to come to harm." Marcin discovered this principle when he attempted to use NeoVim, only to find that undo functionality was not working correctly.

Upon further investigation, Marcin discovered that NeoVim had changed the format of the undo files, deleting the old ones entirely. This caused him to lose valuable undo history dating back several weeks and multiple software updates. After raising an issue about this problem, he was informed that NeoVim's persistent undo format was unstable and not to be relied upon.

Marcin's disappointment in NeoVim's handling of data preservation led him to question the company's commitment to user trust and care. He asserts that breaking the persistent undo feature, a fundamental part of the editor, is a clear violation of Raskin's First Law. This incident emphasizes the importance of maintaining user data integrity and respecting the user's right to access their own data, even across significant time gaps or software upgrades.