Learning Vi
I've been attempting to learn Vi and proper typing rather than my usual point and punch practice. I've read that, as a programmer, I should really learn how to use an editor, like, super well and I've seen some people fly on Vi. So, I'm going to give it a shot.
One of the things I've always heard about Vi, and just about any new skill, is that to get really good at it you need to use it all the time. Total immersion. Along those lines, I decided to trick out as many of my applications as possible to use Vi editing mode. I'm actually amazed at how many I'm able to get in Vi mode. Here's my current set up:
Thunderbird:
As my email client of choice, this one needed to change. Luckily, I found a cool plugin that let's you choose an outside editor in which to write your emails (a reoccurring theme, as you'll see). The plugin's called External Editor and I've set it up to run 'gvim --nofork'. This lets me, when I'm in a message editor, launch Vi and edit all I want and then save it back to the Thunderbird editor. Very handy.
Eclipse:
As my IDE of choice, this was another one to change. One solution I found was Eclim. This lets me use Eclipse features in Vi; code completion, project management and ant task handling. I tried using Eclim for a while but it never seemed to click for me. I really wanted my IDE! I decided that what I really wanted was just to edit the files in Vi, not manage the whole project there. So I just went to the preferences and set up an external editor for gvim. I'll see if I can live without my code completion, but so far so good.
Shell:
For those that don't use Unix, this might not apply. I found out there's a Vi mode for bash. In your .inputrc file, you just add
set editing-mode vi
set keymap vi-insert
Now you can edit mostly like you do in Vi. Not everything seems to work the same, but it's close.
Firefox:
Yes, even Firefox! I'm actually writing this right now in gvim. Just install an extension called Mozex (need the dev version for Firefox 2.0) and set up your textareas to open in Vi. Now you've got Vi whenever you're editing a textarea in Firefox. Sweet!
Text Editing:
Um... Nothing special here. I just use gvim.
That covers about 90% of my text editing in a day. The only things left out are Gmail, which Mozex doesn't seem to want to work with, and Word docs, for obvious reasons. I don't know if I'll be able to get this set up going at work or not. Depends on if they'll let me install a vim client. They're kind of sticklers about installing non-authorized software.
Now I'm trying to get faster at touch typing by playing Tux Typing. It's already improved my accuracy a lot. I don't even have to look at the keyboard anymore ... most of the time.
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