
Opinionated dotfiles for vim, zsh, git and OS X - gglanzani
http://skwp.github.com/dotfiles/
======
zefhous
Who is this for?

While I appreciate the effort and attention to detail that was put into this,
I don't think this is really useful to anyone as it is intended.

For a new or novice Vim user, this kind of thing is too much at once and could
actually be harmful. To properly learn, you need to start using things one at
a time until they are internalized. Only then should you move on to the next
new plugin or set of mappings. Including too many plugins at once is harmful
because users will become complacent and won't end up using most of what they
have there.

For experienced users, you can't just throw away all your existing stuff and
replace it with a bunch of stuff someone else has chosen. You would certainly
encounter unexpected changes in behavior and conflicting maps or plugins.

That said, it is always great and useful to look through other people's
dotfiles, and to selectively use pieces and ideas from them. I did see some
things that look interesting to me, so I'll take those and work them into my
environment.

This is a great effort, but it would be better to find ways of teaching new
tools incrementally, not just saying "Here's all this great stuff I use. It's
the best so you should use it too. Just download my dotfiles and you'll be all
set."

------
jvm
> Apple-style philosophy: make everything Just Work and Look Good. Don't worry
> about too many options.

...I guess that's why vim is the best editor, and why they need to be using
oh-my-zsh on top of zsh?

Nice config setup even if it is hilarious to me that they pretend to be
worried about having 'too many options'. Works for me anyway, that's never
been something I've worried about too much.

------
gbog
Every time I see a vimrc with shortcuts that have the sole purpose of editing
one's vimrc, I can't avoid thinking these guys are over doing it.

~~~
alinajaf
That particular hack is among my favourite. I think I learned it from Steve
Losh. It means that if I'm editing away and I notice some repetitive task I
keep running into, I can quickly open up my vimrc, create a mapping and then
source it again all in a few keystrokes. Totally changed the way I use vim.

------
HalibetLector
Am I the only one who can't use Solarized because it gives me a headache? I'm
not trolling, I'm being serious. The contrast between the text and the
background is lower than in a black background/white foreground setup. It
strains my eyes, giving me a headache after about 10 minutes or so.

~~~
gglanzani
I wish for a higher contrast as well. That's really unfortunate because that's
one of the theme which is nice, well thought and ubiquitous.

Right now I'm using Molokai.

~~~
ajacksified
I fixed this for myself by changing the background to a darkish brown:
<https://github.com/ajacksified/vim-colors-solarized-brown>

Similar still, but a little higher contrast.

------
jh3
Sooo many vim plugins...

I have 19 installed (and I think that's too many). Out of those 19, I
regularly use 5 or less (not including passive ones like Vundle). My goal is
to reduce the amount of crap I have to load, not add as much crap as possible
just in case.

~~~
mutewinter
I'm down to 47 plugins[1]. Only 27 if you don't count the language additions
and Vundle. I've whittled it down over many months of scrutiny. I do actually
make use of almost all of the plugins daily.

[1]:<https://github.com/mutewinter/dot_vim>

~~~
jh3
I have actually been using your dot_vim repository as a base for my
configuration. I like how you have things set up, but I don't do things like
RoR development (I do still have vim-rails installed, though...). So, thanks
for making everything nice and tidy.

Also, I know this isn't something you should have to answer, but is there a
way to close buffers with LustyJuggler?

~~~
mutewinter
No way that I know of. I tend to leave my buffers open indefinitely for the
entire session. I work in splits and am constantly rotating buffers using
Command-T, NERDTree, and LustyJuggler.

------
wahnfrieden
What vim or zsh dotfiles _aren't_ opinionated? I'm interested in seeing some
which provide saner defaults without opinions, to use as a common base for
other dotfiles and to be able to recommend to anyone without having to sell
them on anything - sort of like a CSS reset + sane defaults. Vim comes with
some things that are just stupid.

------
hnbascht
»OSX is the best OS. MacVim is the best editor. Zsh is the best shell. Pry is
the best irb. Solarized is the best color scheme.«

It should probably be called »Chauvinist starter pack«.

~~~
toadi
He called in opinionated... So this allows such opinionated description of his
tools.

~~~
eropple
Must we hash out, again, the difference between "opinionated" and "douchey"?

------
entropie
"OSX is the best OS. MacVim is the best editor. Zsh is the best shell. Pry is
the best irb. Solarized is the best color scheme."

This is hilarious. No, thanks.

------
TheBoff
I wish he would describe this as his personal set up, rather than some sort of
mega pack. It just seems like a lot of marketing over someone's settings...

------
herge
I see a lot of key bindings for buffers, but few for tabs.

Am I the only one who uses tabs in vim? They're great.

------
olalonde
Slightly related question: It seems zsh is gaining in popularity. What is the
learning curve like coming from bash? Is it a "superset" of bash or completely
different?

~~~
adavies42
basically depends on how much of bash you've been using. i'd say it's a strict
superset of 99% of what 99% of bash users do. the prompt language is about the
only thing i can think of at the moment that most people ever touch at all
that's significantly different. (if you're into writing custom completion
modules or something, that's part's completely different.)

------
dspillett
_> For the love of all that is holy, stop abusing your hands! Remap caps-lock
to escape_

Personally I map it to nothing. On all the desktop/portable machines I
regularly use (both Linux and Windows) cap-lock is effectively a dead key, and
as all the servers I have reason to connect to are connected to using
terminals running on one of those desktops/portables the same is true there
too.

~~~
tikhonj
Why map it to nothing when you can put it to good use instead?

Now, I'm an Emacs user, so having Caps Lock as Control is even more important,
but I've found it nice even in normal programs like Chrome. The only time it's
inconvenient is when I'm using somebody else's different physical machine, but
that happens sufficiently infrequently that it's worth the slight annoyance.

------
funkah
> _make everything Just Work and Look Good. Don't worry about too many
> options._

> _MacVim is the best editor._

...

