Month: October 2012

Ok, I have been using Vim for about 15 years now, and even did a whole presentation on vim at my SD PHP Meetup, and had a reference to vimdiff in one of my slides. But honestly I have never used it.

WOW, what a great tool. Here are a couple of links that I found useful.

http://www.debianadmin.com/vimdiff-edit-two-or-three-versions-of-a-file-with-vim-and-show-differences.html

The video shows you how to use vimdiff as your git diffing tool.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hb5RVnOda2o

One thing to add. If you follow the steps for using vimdiff as your git diff external tool, make sure to add this to your .gitconfig
[pager]
diff =

Otherwise you will get errors.

Also, when editting more than 2 files at once, those shortcuts won’t work.
Instead of :dp, use :diffput b#
Instead of :do, use :diffget b#

b# is just a number of the window pane starting at 1, counting left to right.
Shorthand :diffpu or :diffg

I was a sole developer for bowlingball.com for eight years. While there, I was very happy to be the only tech person. I was able to do things my way. There was even an employee that encouraged the owner to outsource the programming, and to get rid of me. Needless to say, I was very unhappy when I heard this.

Looking back… being a sole developer is bad for both the company and the developer themself.

Developers should strive to be part of a team. It is so hard to grow by yourself. If you have to be willing to put yourself out there and work very hard to learn. If you have co-workers, you will learn from each other. Someone will have your back if you make a mistake. Learning best practices is easier with more people.

If a company can not afford to hire at least 3 people, they are doing themselves a disservice by hiring any. What happens when that person leaves? Who’s double checking that person? Did you really hire the “Best” you could?

Outsourcing to a group of developers is not necessarily as expensive as it sounds. Sure, per hour you may pay more, but you are basically buying the experience of a group of people. If someone leaves that group, there are others that can pick up where they left off easily. You should not be left hanging in a transition. You are not paying an employee when they are not working to 100% productivity or for them to spend time learning.

In the end, a sole developer really isn’t good for either party.

I gave a presentation at SD PHP on Vim, and when I got home from giving the presentation, I had this book sitting on my doorstep. A little late for my presentation, but that’s probably a good thing.

All I have to say is WOW. I am going to have to give another presentation from just the new things I’ve learned. This book is not for beginners by any means. And if you think you know Vim well, I would say pick this up and have your mind blown.

I have been using Vim daily for over 14 years. It’s how I write code, which is how I make a living. The book starts off with the dot (.) command. Which is very useful, but not the first thing you would learn in Vim. I have used that command extensively for years. But nonetheless, with that kind of start, I knew that starting there meant the book would be advanced.

I am currently at page 33, and have said OMG many times with the cool things Vim can do, that I had no clue about. Based on this alone, go get this book. 5 out 5 stars/elephants/candy canes, whatever you want to use.

Practical Vim: Edit Text at the Speed of Thought