[enriquto]

> Why Bram built his own language [...] I don't really understand.

What language would have you chosen in 1991 instead of creating vimscript? The vimscript language is a very natural extension[0] of Bill Joy's "ex" language, that was used in vi since 1976. The history of vimscript is not weird, it's just a fairly natural continuation of existing practices. Vimscript9 is a least-friction update for modern times.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vim_(text_editor)#Vim_script

[CorrectHorseBat]

I should have written I don't really know anything about.

According to your link scripting was only available from '98, at which point Lua and Python were already around, but then I don't know how viable that would have been. Funny you say that about ex, because I find running ex commands from vimscript the most clunky thing about it.

In my opinion the least friction for the ecosystem would have been to follow neovim and adapt Lua.