Tools of the Trade
Over the last year I’ve gone from pretty much not knowing anything about JavaScript to building production quality applications. Great tools are essential to great development. I always wish I had more time to learn the tools better, so this is my chance.
Vim
This year I started using neovim. The transition was painless, except for the fact that they changed the configuration script name from .nvimrc to $XFD_CONFIG_HOME/nvim/init.vim which took a bit of googling to figure out.
I started using fuzzy search via ctrlp.vim for opening files, which saved my pinky finger from continually hitting tab.
I still have the default case-sensitive normal search enabled. This year it’s time for the same super powered fuzzy search, but this time of my buffer. Apperently, all it would have taken was simplying adding let g:ctrlp_extensions = ['buffertag', 'tag', 'line', 'dir'] to my config file.
I have Fugitive installed, but rarely use it, except for file history time-travel invoked with Glog. This definitely needs to get used more often in 2016. Not having to leave my editor to commit my work would be a small, yet frequest, time saver.
Combined with EditorConfig and ESlint my vim configuration holds up against most IDEs.
Git
What can I say about git other than ‘use it’! Actually, it requires a bit of discipline to achieve nice commits. Use --amend to add files you forgot. Just make sure you haven’t pushed yet.
ESlint
Linting is great! It enforces a consistent coding style and prevents many silly errors before they happen. Eslint is highly configurable and integrates well with vim.