Coding in VIM, Preparations

Why i’m choosing coding in VIM?

• It looks cool, super cool.
• Think a coding Jedi you are some will.  —- Master Yoda.
• It allows you to code anywhere, since all you need is SSH/MOSH.
• Yes, that being said, you can even be coding on your iPad, and you will not feel any difference.

That’s it.

Difficulties I need to overcome:

• Memorize tons of commands.
• Forget my mouse/trackpad, be thinking without mouse.
• The fact that VIM lacks many modern features which other GUI text editors have.
• Luckily, there are tons of plugins helping us to solve this problem, and this is what I will document in this article.

Without further do…

Pathogen

Firstly, I need a plugin manager, and they said Pathogen is the best choice.

Github – Pathogen

What does Pathogen do?

They said it’s a runtime manager or something… well, I don’t know what is runtime.

But what it does is:

Allowing you to simply put plugins in a certain folder, then Pathogen will load it automatically.

• Which means, all you need to do is cloning a plugin from github.
• by default, this directory is ~/.vim/bundle/.
• Of course, writing some configuration in ~/.vim/.vimrc will make your life even better.

YouCompleteMe

In VIM, auto completion, a feature comes by default in other GUI editors, is a plugin which need to be installed manually.

Github – YCM

And they said, to make this works better, you need to install something called tern.

Github – tern

I don’t what does tern do. I didn’t feel that it changed anything.

Not. A. Clue.

Note that:

• You will need to compile YCM.
• You will need to install dependencies for tern.
• You will need a config file for tern.

For more info, see their documentation.

vim-javascript

You can enable syntax highlight by write syntax on in ~/.vim/.vimrc.

However, it doesn’t work well with javascript.

For instance, in array.splice(1,2);, the splice will not be highlighted.

Weird, but we have a solution, which is vim-javascript.

Github – vim-javascript

Simply install it by pathogen, then you are all set.

color schemes

Been using Atom for a long time, I’m accustomed to the syntax color scheme of Atom.

Luckily, someone made a color scheme based on Atom, which is one dark.

One Dark

Quote:

placing colors/onedark.vim in your ~/.vim/colors/ directory and autoload/onedark.vim in your ~/.vim/autoload/ directory.

Then put some configuration in .vimrc

syntax on
colorscheme onedark

Since my linux only support 256 colors, I also added let g:onedark_termcolors=256.

I don’t know what would happen if I delete it, don’t ask me, I’m too lazy to try that.

NERDTree

This plugin gives you a tree show your directories on the left.

Githun – NERDTree

To use it, you need to memorize more commands.

So far, those commands I find useful are as follows:

• Ctrl + n to toggle the display of NerdTree.
• this is because I added a line to change the hot key for this feature, will explain later.
• q to hide NerdTree
• t to open a file in a new vim tab
• gt to jump to next vim tab

To change the shortcut for toggling NerdTree, add this line in .vimrc:

map :NERDTreeToggle

Also, this line will help you to close vim if you just closed the last file.

autocmd bufenter * if (winnr("$") == 1 && exists("b:NERDTree") && b:NERDTree.isTabTree()) | q | endif

This is a powerful tool, too powerful for me to fully utilize it. I will keep learning.

Syntastic

Ladies and gentleman, this is —-

**Syntastic.

I love this statement, which is on their Github page.

Github – Syntastic

It’s easy to use syntastic. However, don’t forget to instal Jshint by npm afterward.

npm -i -g jshint

And be cautious, the name is Jshint not Jslint

What I’m gonna do but I haven’t.

• Auto close syntax.
• Check if my syntax is valid automatically.