There are a few things that I think every coder should know.
- A bit of Vim
Really just enough to hop on a server, find the file they need, make a few edits and save. Do that all with a bit of confidence and you’re set. I don’t think that every developer should be a Vim fanatic, just know the basics.
- Love the command line
Are you using a GUI for version control? Well you really should know the command line first. What happens when the set of commits you need to make is just too much for the GUI to handle and it crashes? If you’ve only ever used the GUI, you shit out of luck. Sure use a GUI when it’s faster, and you know how to do the same thing via the command line, but learn command line first.
But I’ve been a hypocrite
I’m not a hypocrite on the Vim thing. With recently installing Mountain Lion, I’ve been working to build my perfect Vim install. It’s not quite there and I keep going back to PHPStorm, but I miss Vim while I’m there.
The part I’ve been neglecting is my command line skills, specifically with Git.
I always do branch merging and cloning from the command line, but I’ve defaulted to Git Tower for my commits. Mainly for the line by line commits I can do. I always figured that there was a command line way to do it, but I was just to lazy to bother figuring it out.
Well what I wanted was the -p flag. If you’re looking for a great 20 minute set of videos on it they are right here.
Props to @pippinsplugins for bringing this to my attention.