Forem: John William Davis

A Walking Stick and a .vimrc 🌄 ⌨️

John William Davis — Fri, 29 Jan 2021 00:51:02 +0000

What do these two things have in common?

The best thing about Vim, the reason why I have come to love this particular piece of software so much, is that it can be so incredibly personal and unique for each user. I love the way that I can effectively have my own personal Vim designed by me - specifically for me. What makes this possible is the .vimrc file. The .vimrc file can be tailored a bit at a time as my workflow changes. And my .vimrc changes as my knowledge and my skill level, with Vim itself and with programming in general, increases.

This past summer my 11-year-old son found a fallen tree branch, about two meters long, on the forest floor while we were camping in the mountains. He began whittling on the branch and using it as a walking stick. I watched him make some designs on the bark with his pocket knife. He took the walking stick home with him from the mountains and he continued working on it, carving more designs, whittling the wood to make a placeholder that fit his hand perfectly.

Recently, I began seeing the parallels between my son's walking stick and my .vimrc file. By editing my .vimrc file, adding plugins using Vundle ( Vundle itself being a brilliant plugin ), making leader key bindings, finding the themes that I like working with, adding all sorts of settings, tweaking just about everything - I am making it more and more practical for me. I am making the walking stick that I want to take with me on a hiking trail.

In customizing my .vimrc, Vim becomes a tool that can be any shape or colour I want it to be. And I have found that the challenge of sharpening this tool is very satisfying.

From running the vimtutor command for the first time ( where you can first learn how to exit the initially weird environment that is Vim ) to full-on expert in your particular way of working - your .vimrc can change and grow - getting sharper and sharper. I like to think of the .vimrc file ( or other dotfiles such as .bashrc, .zshrc, .tmux.conf, .gitconfig ) as weirdly creative yet extremely practical canvases on which the growth of a software developer is inadvertently charted.

Of course, I do not change and experiment with my .vimrc file in order to "chart growth". I do it because I am seeking to become a more proficient and efficient developer. But, if I were to look back at the previous versions of my dotfiles, I would definitely see growth and increased understanding. An increasing understanding of Vimscript, sure, but also of programming concepts in general. And, most importantly, the various dotfile versions chart an increased understanding of what works for me.

Everybody uses Vim differently.

For example, Kelsey Hightower, Staff Developer Advocate - Google Cloud Platform, has said publicly that he uses Vim without any plugins whatsoever. I listened to a podcast in which he explained that writing code with a simple Vim setup, without syntax highlighting enabled, helps him to focus on each line. And that sounds cool to me. While foregoing plugins is not something that I feel I want to do, the great thing about Vim is that your configuration ( or lack of configuration ) is all yours to do with what you want. If you want to code with Vim out of the box without plugins and you feel that helps your work - that is great. 💯

I have a folder containing my dotfiles under version control for awhile now and this is what I see when I run git log --oneline on that repo:

Each one of the commits represents at least a few things I have learned to make my workflow more efficient.

For me, change is what my .vimrc is all about. It is a living document. Experimentation is all.

Sometimes I work with a vim that looks like this:

And sometimes it looks like this:

I will try a particular plugin for awhile, and if I find it useful, then great - I have made a discovery to help my work. But if I find I do not like it, it is an easy process to uninstall it using Vundle.

I have learned some very useful things through the book,
Learn Vimscript the Hard Way by Steve Losh. There is a free HTML version - or you can purchase a paper copy or an ebook through the website.

I can not say enough about the wonderful repository,
Awesome Vim.

I have also proudly ripped off some great stuff from the repository, The Ultimate vimrc.

Plus, a special mention to the dotfiles of Ben Orenstein.

Also, Vim-Galore has been an amazing help. Of course, I have never taken from these open source files wholesale. I digested the changes as I went along - a bit at a time.

The resources above, and many other that can be found by searching Google and GitHub, are plenty for anyone wanting help in making the most awesome walking stick - tailor made for themselves.

Vim is a tool that actually uses its own programming language - and a fascinating one at that. Vim source code is written in the C language - but Vimscript ( mentioned earlier in this post ) is what one uses to write plugins and add functionality onto Vim. While I do not use Vimscript in my day to day work beyond customizing my Vim configuration - I quite like the challenge of learning Vimscript and slowly improving my use of it. Eventually, I will use it to write my own plugins for use in my own work. I can then share those plugins with anyone else who might be interested. If that is not a rich piece of software - I do not know what is.

For more advanced features, I like this video by Alisue Lambda:

And I like these two by Chris Toomey:

The benefits of writing code with a modular editor take a bit of work and practice to realize - but are well worth the effort.

The Vim way of editing code can also be achieved and transferred to other editors - such as VS Code ( also incredibly rich software ) with it's wonderful community and collection of extensions - including a terrific one called vscodevim.

Or to Atom - with its lightness and speed and a very well made vim emulation package.

I use VS Code and Atom from time to time - depending on what I am working on.

Classic Vim, VS Code, or Atom - all three are brilliant open source software. With the Vim key binding plugins available, I can keep consistency between my tools.

Note to myself: Always be searching the forest floor.

Making your own walking stick is simply a better feeling than buying one. You own the tool in a way that you would not otherwise.

The biggest lesson I have learned for myself through making my own programming walking stick?

Continually find what works for me - and go with it 🤓

Young In Mind - For the Rest of My Life 🏄‍♂️

John William Davis — Tue, 15 Dec 2020 04:10:28 +0000

Starting to Code at 47

Most people would agree it is a good thing to be curious and to have a wide range of interests. It is good to be inspired by many different people and many different disciplines. All my adult life, I have believed that change == growth.

This view might come in part from when I studied acting in the theatre - from the 10th grade in high school to age 21 ( I never had a professional acting job ). Or maybe it comes from when I wrote screenplays ( unsold ) and studied film in my twenties. Both in theatre and in cinema one learns to look for where change occurs in the characters on the pages of a play or a screenplay. Almost always, that is where character development happens.

Three years ago, a change began happening for me when I started to explore programming. At first, I slowly dipped my toe in the water with some Google searches such as:

This led to Khan Academy - where I learned what a variable is. I played around with my first function ( whatever that meant ) by inputting arguments ( whatever those were ) into opening and closing parentheses. I certainly did not write this "function" that changed the colours and sizes of some shapes using JavaScript. I soon learned that JavaScript is a programming language. Through some more research online I learned ( sort of ) what a programming language is.

Around the same time that I was dabbling in code on Khan Academy in the fall of 2017, I happened to be reading a book called THANK YOU FOR BEING LATE, by Thomas L. Friedman.

That is where I first read about GitHub. I learned GitHub is an online platform for sharing code and collaborating on code. I learned that Git ( what a weird sounding name ) is software for what programmers call a "distributed version control system". These were intriguing words even if I only fractionally understood what they meant 😃 Soon after, I came across Paul Ford's remarkable online article, WHAT IS CODE? - and I found it fascinating.

After reading and rereading that article, I was hooked. At 47, with a wife and three children under nine years old, I decided that "software development" was what I wanted to do.

After a Month or Two . . .

Next stop was FreeCodeCamp where I began to learn HTML, CSS and a bit of JavaScript. Soon after, Treehouse became the first financial investment for my new educational path. I began to learn Python. I had a full time job at a company where I had worked for over a decade but I wanted something better paying with more opportunity for growth and of more interest to me personally. A year passed where I explored all sorts of possibilities in tech. I did a course on Coursera where I learned about Linux, Bash and the command line. I was also working a second job part time as an Uber driver in the Seattle area. I began picking the brain of every developer I had in my car (of which there were many). And my self study continued.

I bought a new, more powerful laptop from System76 which came pre-installed with the open source Pop_OS! ( a laptop and Linux Distro which I still use and love ). I read about the Raspberry Pi. I bought a "Pi" and began playing with it.

Another year of self study continued where I tried Ruby, learned more and more about the command line, npm, Ruby Gems, and continued with Python and more JavaScript. I did many different tutorials on YouTube - and looked at everything I could - from JavaScript code challenges on CodeWars to Kali Linux and cybersecurity. My wife and I attended a few GitHub Constellation talks in the spring of 2018. I had a ton of imposter syndrome - but everyone was friendly and the talks were absorbing.

Third Phase

After two years of self study, feeling that I wanted some more structure and help, I found a bootcamp to attend. I dealt with more imposter syndrome but I met some great people, learned a ton, finished the cohort and began my journey of learning while job searching post cohort.

And I am in the thick of that process now.

Software development is a discipline where you have the opportunity to learn multiple new things every single day. Sometimes it feels like trying to drink the ocean, but I try to remember to simply take it one day at a time, putting one foot in front of the other.

At times it takes me multiple attempts to get a particular concept or skill.

For example, I tried working with Vim at least three times - each time putting it aside in frustration. But eventually, with the help of Ben Orenstein and Chris Toomey's excellent tutorials on Upcase by Thoughtbot, the concepts and muscle memory began sticking and I am now a happy Vimmer. Vim is an incredibly rich piece of software that you can continue to grow with for years and years.

I have come to love the modular style of editing code. Sometimes I use Atom ( mostly just because Atom is simply cool 😎 ) with a nice Vim key bindings package. But usually I split my time between classic Vim in my terminal and VS Code ( also incredibly rich software ) with it's excellent Vim emulation extension. I am a bit obsessed with text editors 🤓.

I consciously remind myself everyday to take my inspiration from everywhere. From David Heinemeier Hansson and his work on Ruby On Rails and Basecamp. To Tania Rascia and her wonderful tutorial on
React.

Tania RasciaFollow

Software engineer and open source creator

From David Goggins and his amazing book, Can't Hurt Me:

To Dan Abramov and his blog:

Or Dan's series of JavaScript tutorials he did in collaboration with Maggie Appleton:

This podcast episode from Chadd Wright resonated with me:

The podcast has nothing whatsoever to do specifically with programming, but has everything to do with not giving up.

Chadd is a former Navy Seal and a current Ultra Runner:

And I am inspired equally by the YouTube content of Brian Douglas, developer advocate at GitHub. He makes complicated ideas clear.

Brian DouglasFollow

Brian founded OpenSauced, a platform for turning open source into opportunity. Try it out and let me know what you think.

I try to remind myself that everything in my life can feed into becoming a better programmer. From eating healthy and getting enough sleep to working on a personal project. From contributing to open source to writing these words using Vim in KDE Konsole terminal. When I am on a walk in the sun with my twin boys, or when I am preparing something to eat for my daughter, I am becoming a better developer. It is all part of it.

Software development is an incredibly vast, creative and beautifully complex activity. If I were a teenager now or even if I had three lifetimes, I would never reach the end of this road - and that is more than fine with me.

Software, and everything having to do with writing code, stretches my mind and forces me to look forward everyday. That is a wonderful thing to anyone in any profession or craft. And I can stay with this discipline and still have never-ending change == growth in my professional life - for the rest of my life. Looking back over the past three years, I would say that was what I was really looking for in 2017 when I started believing I could do this.