What makes you think this is a rewrite? If this is a rewrite from scratch, they are insanely fast coders, considering that they have a full-blown editor in less than a month (first commit is from January, 31)
That first commit also shows it is not a rewrite, though, since it has a comment starting with "Import vim from changeset v5628:c9cad40b4181"
That first commit also shows it is not a rewrite, though, since it has a comment starting with "Import vim from changeset v5628:c9cad40b4181"