Full Stack for Front End Engineers Exercise 3: Introducing Vim

Transcript from the "Exercise 3: Introducing Vim" Lesson

[00:00:00]
>> Jem Young: We all learned trace route, we all know ping now. Let's move on to something a bit more fun. And not cash cats, I love cash cats. VIM, yes, this is what you see people in movies typing in cuz you look so cool, and it's just a lot of fun.

[00:00:20] VIM is VI Improved, I know, it's like php, one of those self referencing definitions. But vim.org says it best, VIM is an editor. It's not gonna hold your hand, it's a tool, and it has to be learned. The reason why we're learning VIM is because, actually, I asked that question.

[00:00:39] VIM's the ubiquitous text editor, but why should you care? Because servers don't have GUIs. You can't use sublime text or VS code or any of your tools that you have, any IDE. You can't use it on the server. The server's gonna have Emacs or VIM, and it's almost guaranteed to have VIM.

[00:00:54] So if we're gonna edit any files on a server, we're gonna use VIM. That's why we're gonna learn VIM today. But best part about VIM, if you're a VIM pro, which takes a long time, you're much faster than anybody else on the IDE. You're just flying through your keyboard, cuz you don't use your mouse anymore, it's all keyboard commands.

[00:01:13] And someone that's good at VIM, I was at React Rally, and was it Michael Jackson? No, it was Ron Florence. And he was live coding a React component, and he was using VIM. And he was just flying through, way faster than I could do it, because if you're good at VIM, you are just a speed demon, and you're so productive.

[00:01:34] I like VIM, I don't use it in my every day, because, well, I like Sublime Text, I like all my plugins, but VIM is just an awesome, awesome tool to learn. It's one of those things that if you learn it early, it keeps giving back to you. Question?

[00:01:49] Sorry. [LAUGH]
>> Jem Young: There's a question. What does DNS mean to your site for you.
>> Speaker 2: I asked them to maybe clarify that but then I wasn't quite sure.
>> Jem Young: Yeah.
>> Jem Young: But all right, so when we clarify, we'll answer that question. But let's get on to VIM because I think of everything that you're gonna learn today, VIM is one of the most useful tools you could have in your toolbox.

[00:02:19] So let's go ahead and open up our command line, and just type in vi.
>> Jem Young: And you should see something like this. Yes, so you are in the beginnings of great ideas. The journey of a million miles begins with a single step. Opening a simple vi, you can build the world with vi.

[00:02:43] So I'm just gonna go ahead and jump into mine, whoops.
>> Jem Young: Same, and I can go to insert mode, hello. All right, just make sure my VIM is up and running as well.