New tooling

May. 4, 2020

I’ve been that old dog for years now. And my old trick has been vim.

Countless friends and colleagues have tried their best to show me the “way” of IDE’s and fanciful text editors. But I’ll turn around and find a vim plugin that can just about do the same thing. Thus thwarted their conversion.

I dabbled in Sublime Text (even bought a license) and Atom. Had a previous employer pay for a Jetbrains Pycharm license. But, back I went to my trusty, reliable vim config.

Vim has been the 60-year-old Massey Ferguson, while it certainly may lack all the bells and whistles of a spanking new John Deere, at the end of the day it gets the job done. And, it’s something you’re already familiar with.

And perhaps that’s just it: familiarity. That’s why the old dog scoffs at the new tricks; roll over works just fine for receiving a treat.

However, I finally gave in. I’ve succumb to an actual software editor—or IDE—Visual Studio Code.

It took a lot to convince me, but I’m convinced. It’s a beautiful tool, and all the more surprising for it being a Microsoft product.

This old dog has in fact learned a new trick. It is possible.