Vim

I write each post for this blog in Vim. Writing in the terminal makes me feel like a programmer, even when I’m not specifically programming. In this post, I’ll share how I spellcheck in Vim. ...

I use Vim’s spell feature when writing blog posts. Very often, the first suggestion it makes is the one that I choose. Consider a word like ‘Rubysit.’ My dictionary contains the word ‘Rubyist’ (naturally) and that’s what Vim spell is going to suggest to me first. For transposition errors like this I’d like to skip the word picker when possible. To automatically choose the first suggestion, in normal mode put your cursor over the word and type 1z=.

RC files, thought to stand for “run command” files, are read by a program during startup. The file that configures the PostgreSQL REPL psql is called .psqlrc. In this post I’ll share my personal psql configuration. ...

How does one exit Vim “Ex” mode? But first… how did you even get into “Ex” mode? ...

Auto-formatting code is good, and you should be doing it all the time. Why? It helps you write better code in real-time, preempt trivial discussions, and maybe even democratize programming. ...

I’ve been using, teaching, and stanning Vim since almost the beginning of my programming career. Yet, when asked to explain this preference, I stumble. In this post, I’d like to explore why I love Vim. ...

Any command you type out manually, or even tab-complete a few times, can be shortened. A common shortening technique is the terminal alias. Here are some tips that help me write better aliases and cut my terminal keystrokes. ...

From normal mode, N% will jump you to that percentage of the file. So 50% jumps to halfway through the file.

Hit K on a keyword, and Vim looks up the program under the keyword. It’s a bit jarring because Vim appears to shell out from your buffer to show the definition. To see that man page in Vim, load the man.vim plugin from command mode or in your .vimrc: :runtime! ftplugin/man.vim Now, you can read man pages as a Vim buffer: :Man curl

The import statements at the top of a JavaScript component file can be a confusing, duplicative, churning mess. Is there a way to organize them that makes sense and scales? In this post, I’d like to share the way I handle this detail. ...