My Dev Environment Might Surprise You... 

To be VERY clear there is no problem with customizing your setup and doing the vim path!!! The “target” of this video is me five years ago. I’m trying to show that it is not necessary to be a “real dev” (and it’s kind of a waste when you’re still early in learning code) That is it. No shade. No dichotomy. Just a simple setup because that’s all I need. If y’all go after anyone because this video you got the wrong message from it

Interesting, I’m in the exact opposite boat. I’ve had the simplest setup for YEARS. Then I switched to neovim on my Mac (just wanted to learn something new and I had some free time on my hands). Later on I switched to Linux and a tiling window manager (bspwm). Yes, neovim is configured exactly to my liking, I even wrote my own monochrome theme for it, but my setup is very minimal. The one thing that changed for me however, is that I redescovered my passion for programming. I don’t know how to explain it exactly, but coding is so much more fun, I’m looking forward to writing some code in my environment, it feels cool. I’m definitely more productive, but not because I do crazy vim motions and macros and what have you, but because I have a much better motivation for coding. It’s not for everyone of course, if you’re happy where you are, no need to change, even if you move faster in vim and do things like a vim ninja, the majority of the time in a real work environment that’s really not what’s slowing you down, you think about problems, communicate, read docs etc.

I don’t think there’s been a single time in my career where I’ve tag teamed my or another’s laptop.

This is the workflow I am going for when I am developing my software - the closer to vanilla the better. It solves so much headache when you are not doing some crazy ass set ups for your app env

100% agree with your philosophy. I also use a bunch of ide with mostly defaults.. I don’t want to spend time setting things up

Oh Theo, I've been on this journey - I now use Ranger for file browsing in a Terminal, and either VSCode or PHPStorm depending on whether I've got my head in PHP or Typescript. The most fanciness I have these days is changing my font in my editors. Thanks for the CMD+Tilde shortcut, I didn't know that - that's going straight into the memory banks :)

You just changed my life with the Cmd + ~ trick… serial 3-4x Chrome + 2-3x VS Code window user here. Thank you 🙏

Thanks for this. There are more “Stock/vanilla” MacOS key bindings which are pretty good as well, beyond CMD Tab/~ and get you pretty far with editing code. Want to jump between words? Option left/right. Want to jump to the beginning/ end of a line? CMD left/right. Start/end of a file? CMD up down. Wanna CMD Tab but with chrome/safari tabs? ctrl Tab. Works with any other applications which uses tabs, like the stock terminal, finder, VSCode, IntelliJ etc. This gets me pretty darn quick with editing, multitasking etc which is why I never bothered learning vim or so. Plus this is built into every Mac and works with almost every app I use on a daily basis.

I've probably spent more time tweaking my setup than I will ever make up in efficiency. In fact I might loose efficiency in the long run due to being too attached to my tools to leave them for what is best suited for the task. Still prefer it though. Like others have said, the sense of ownership and comfort is highly motivating and makes it so nearly any programming task can be a fun challange. I imagine this is less important if you are working mostly on projects that you have a strong ownership of. There's also the fact that I never had many good ideas for personal projects, so working on my tools is a good stand in. The time I waste on that would not have been put to productive use otherwise.

The going to the Apple store and getting a new one and up and running concept, is SO overlooked!!! It is crazy important, specially if you travel. Knowing that I can use ANY mac computer old or new and have it setup just like mine in minutes is huge. It has saved my .... plenty of times.

Totally agree. I was obsessed with configuring my emacs and Linux environment when I was in uni. Now I really don't configure anything so I don't need to waste time getting my environment "ready" when I am on a new machine.

This is a pretty great take. I always felt like I was missing out by not knowing Vim. But most of my time was spent building things and I felt like I never needed it. Im going to learn some of it for fun to see if it helps but most of my time developing is spent on thinking about how to solve problems more than it is navigating around a codebase.

Thanks for the video, Theo! I think this is definitely going to help me improve. I feel like I was too down into the "customization" rabbit hole, trying to achieve my. "perfect" environment. However, this was actually distracting me from getting better as a Software Engineer, since I'm feeling like I've reached a plateau it has been hard to notice any progress. Already uninstalled a lot of things lol Thanks again!

I pretty much agree with you. I went down the vim path few times in my career, until I figured out I'm essentially a tooling addict. I was using tooling more as procrastination than solving any real problems. I would edit my vim config multiple times a day to "squeeze out some extra efficiency", but honestly I was more just wasting time than anything. Now I just use whatever IDE/editor is most popular for the language I'm programming in, and don't touch the default settings as much as possible. I'm way more productive today than back in my tooling addiction days. Nothing against people who do like using vim/emacs/etc though.

Simple setup + Vim on VSCode = crazy productivity

Things I'd still do 1. install Error Lens - seeing warnings and errors immediately at a glance without having to wait for a hover or having to find it in the list of errors is super convenient 2. change the search mode setting to newEditor for a much much better multi-file search experience -- I feel like too few people even know that exists as an option and it's greatly improved my own workflow with minimal effort

Love this. Running fullscreen windows and alt-tab is great. For me, it increases mental clarity by only looking at one thing at a time and reducing distraction. I resent having to allocate mental real estate on things that don't add value, so I keep pretty close to stock, just a few plugins etc. I'd rather use that mental real estate to have a better mental model of my programs.

same here, loved multiple linux distro and different desktop environment in initial days of college, all changed when i got job and mac setup.

Docker remote dev containers are fantastic for environment config. You can specify vscode plugins in the devconfig, not to mention the other benefits of container dev. Onboarding can be as simple as 1. Download and install VSCode 2. Download and install Docker 3. Log in to Git Provider 4. Select repo in vscode 5. Enjoy

I agree this! I already put 6 months learning and configuring my (vim, neovim, spacevim, nvchad, lunarvim) and I almost put my energy on configuring my Arch Linux and the KDE desktop env, however I could setup a unique and fast environment for my self and I'm super fast in my PC and even wrote my own snippet plugins and color-scheme , but when I'm at office and I don't have my setups, I really feel uncomfortable. or when I getting a friends computer to debug or what ever. honestly I will follow this philosophy from now... just vim keybinding works find no configs or fancy customization. Thanks!

Oh yes, been here. Years on my custom arch-sway-wayland setup + patched kernel with crazy nvim config => a stock macos with a vim emulator on vscode. The problem is this way you do not actually support the OSS thingy with your presence, but you may still check the repos and advocate for it or produce the oss itself with such setup. So I don't know it is a somewhat tough question.

you made some good points but I think that using "general solution" on anything will always lack behind "specific tuned solution for individual user". Does it suck when someone sits behind your keyboard? Yea, but it doesnt happen that often and when it does, its 99% of cases no problem. I put them into insert mode or even spin up their VScode that i have lying around. And then there is always this fastest option, where they dont touch my keyboard and simply tell me what to do, with extra time to think ...and I do those edits as fast as they speak.

I have a very similar vscode setup in terms of how lightweight it is. If you haven't heard of the extensions error lens and better comments you should check them out. Personally I can't use vscode without them now

I use Cmd + ~ to switch between my porn tab and work tab since high school.

Wow, this video is amazing. I went full neovim for almost a year, and a few months ago, I reached a similar conclusion. I've since switched back to VSCode for a greater appreciation for what it offers. It's great to see so many people in the comments here that have had similar experiences - I thought I was the only one.

In my company, when you borrow colleague's computer, you are out

I naturally have gotten to this point over the years too. When I was a junior dev learning how to code, I used to customize every aspect of my OS and dev environment. Now I try to use the defaults for everything as much as possible.

do you have a healthy attention span? for me, i want to switch to setup like premeagen's because i get distracted too easily. if i need to wait for something, or even move my hand from the keyboard to the mouse, it is somehow draining my energy. i probably have some other issues to fix within myself also haha, but i believe many people share similar experience.

4:55 - Just as fast... HA, I have installed a control-group script that you can use to dynamically rebind arbitrary keys on your keyboard to "jump to" applications. That one is the only real hack I miss anywhere else. Control+Windows key+[1-5] to bind to a window, Windows key+[1-5] to get to the window. Single-button-press to jump to a specific window and being able to rebind these on the fly is the most awsome desktop improvement I ever have written. It is faster than _anything_ else afaik. It is as close as "Single button press to go where you mentally mapped it" as you can get IMO.

Switching apps on the screen annoy me, but I guess I could learn to get over that. I just don't like that extra 1-2 steps in between what I'm actually trying to do.

I was just trying to learn i3 when I learned about the Ctrl-` trick... how did I not know about this, very useful. Thanks! As others have said, modal editing has become essential for me though :D also using Neovim is just more fun for me

It seems like cloak isn't working anymore :( Watch out! I just checked the issues and its not only me.

Sure, whatever floats your boat, for me there is no going back once I got used to Vim. However, didn't know about cmd + ` or alt ` on linux. Definitely going to use that going forward.

This is so true, focusing on just tools takes away the hours we could've used to just get our job done.

On one hand, I LOVE everything possible with nvim, but on the other hand, i hate all the troubleshooting to get stuff working. My work provides Storm as IDE, i used a lot of VSCode, and still do as scratchpad. One thing though, that makes my workspace less accessible to my colleagues. I have setup the vim config in every IDE i use simply because i love the text navigation + editing ease. I guess its a preference

I used to spend more time customizing my tiling window manager and neovim with Lua than actually developing. And to fix problems when a plugin updated.... No more.

Based on the intro of this video, I thought it was supposed to showcase a minimal environment. However, even though it is very standard workflow, it is still far from what I would consider simple or common in other computers. zsh? VS Code? Language servers and extensions?

Standardization makes magic.

People forget that software development is most of the the time reading docs, just navigating the codebase and thinking. Sometimes it's actually typing code :)

legit perspective

doesn't DotENV do the same thing as Cloak?

I did the exact same thing but on vi, I just narrow down to as simple as possible with my workflow to the point that I only need an terminal with UNIX and bash(I'm planning to remove the bash dependency) and I'm good to go Many people can't use my environment, that's why I always install vscode and leave it there, but I'm fast with feel things

perpetuating the inefficient staggered typewriter QWERTY layout for the simple reason of just being able to use someone else's also staggered QWERTY keyboard lends itself to more and more decades of carpal tunnel problems. funny, but I was like that back in my teens. I switched and never looked back. if someone asks me to access their laptop or macs, I just do it remotely. wont ever have to touch anyone else's keyboard again. neither can they use mine coz that's just ew. yeah, I do have to buy more than a couple as backups, but I'm more comfortable with that than go back to the ancient staggered typewriter QWERTY layout. besides, I've lost that muscle memory a long time ago and I've no regrets whatsoever.

How did you patch the kernel to speed up the animations? Especially for full screen apps

Thank you for making me feel good about CMD+Tab and CMD+~ ing my way through life 😂

have you ever heard of backing up ur dotfiles and making a simple script to set everything up urself?

I don’t see a problem with neovim. Brew install, git clone my config, packerinstall and it’s ready. If I borrow vscode, install vim extension and it’s ready. If I need to code remotely, vim works. Edit something inside docker? vi exists. I don’t need to learn any more keybindings ever again. Just install vim layer and I’m ready

For simple stuff, vscode is definitely ok. However, once the codebase grows or larger edits are required, vim/nvim is the way to go. I wouldn't use i3 tbh, too much hassle. My setup is a stock Ubuntu with minor terminal scripting, nvim, inkscape, and a dual boot Windows partition for games and Photoshop.

I just tried the Rewrap extension and it works on Windows! :)

Only reason why i use vim over vscode is that vscode is electron app, which slows my pc

how to become fast engineer?

yeah I used to use vi (not vim) when I was in university in the late 80s. I use VSCode today for everything, and I do more than just web development, so I use it to look at xml, csv files, pl/sql, etc as well as the normal html/css/js stuff. VS Code is to me the best, and vim or neovim is similar to vi so I know the basics of editing with them already, but I just prefer VScode

I feel the more you mature as a developer, the more you realize YOU DON’T NEED FANCY SHIT anymore. It’s same as PC configurations, Phone configurations or car!

command + tab and command + tilda ... that fckn shortcut, man... i used to right click and select Show all windows everyday at work until I saw a colleague use the shortcut and it was life changing. Seriously, I feel mac developers think everyone knows how to use a mac and not many are sharing these basic tricks. I come from Windows, the land of he poor, but I rock that environment. Then at my new job I had to use a mac for the specific work. anyway, just ranting, don't mind me, love the videos, especially the unedited unscripted live streams, just wish they wouldn't be so long

Cmd + ~ thank you!

I prefer health, my carpal tunnel syndrome doesn't bother me since I use vim.

simplicity

throwing a lot of smoke at primeagen lol

I'm still going to customize the shit outta my stuff 😂

sooooooo true!

Your setup is simple because you’re a front-end dev, lul. The title should be “Why I don’t need fancy setups and you should too”.

I don’t even listen to Nice tutorialm im just reading the comnts lmao

ofc u needed to bash Dart! :D:D

I just clone my dot files….

windows users, ctrl+tab & alt+tab

This is very logical. Personally, I've taken a middle of the road approach: I use vim key binding plugins in VSCode and JetBrains IDEs. That way I get 85% of the benefits of vim while getting many of the benefits an IDE provides.

I want to share my story over here. I come from the same background, heavy-on customization for everything, tiling window managers, neovim, tmux, etc, etc (Arch too, btw). The thing is, once you get down the path of that level of customization, things can get... Out of hands. I'm a person that extremely obsesses about design, consistency, and harmony. If I choose a colorscheme for my editor, it doesn't end there. I want that on my wallpaper as well... And my terminal emulator, and my apps, and my browser, and my entire OS, and sometimes even personal devices like your phone. One might think it should end there, but for people like me, it doesn't (OCD kicking in really hard). Truth is, it never stops. Suddenly, you end up spending way more time tweaking your setup more, getting even more stressed, searching for an impossible perfection instead of getting actual work done, always a new color tweak, always a new vim plugin, always a new addition to my OS. I had to stop. I had to get rid of everything that I then considered my 'identity' as a developer in order to slowly heal from this toxic obsession over my tools, it was the only way I could even think on moving forward and start focusing on important stuff. Sometimes I'm still weak over the idea of going back, but it's slowly starting to disappear, as I feel myself more and more productive by caring less and less over what my setup looks like (which is not easy, 'not caring' is not something that you can't 'just do'). The only thing that remains from my old setup, is the Vim plugin that I use on VSCode (that's not going anywhere). Watching this video made me feel even better about my decision. It definitely isn't an easy thing to move away from everything that you considered 'important' at some point, but, as long as it allows you to focus on the right things for you, then I'd say it's totally worth it, and even therapeutic, in some sort of way. At least for people like me.

The fact that I operate like this has contributed to my imposter syndrome. I’ve just never been interested in the problem of customization much. It’s nice to hear your setup is “simple” too.

I get your point and I kind of agree, but you can set up things ones, save all config files in a dotfiles repo, create an install script and you are ready to go. I can setup a new mac also in an hour just cloning my dotfiles repo and running my install script. Then I have my terminal setup as I am used to, my editors, my basic programs I use almost everywhere, my Raycast configuration with all the extensions setup… and it doesnt take that much time. I would say it’s not about going crazy with your setup, it’s about do something that you feel comfortable with and helps you get your shit done, and on top of that make it easy to replicate anywhere

I think this can extend to many areas of software engineering and life in general. Shit doesn't need to be complex just for the sake of being complex. In many cases, a simple solution is all that's needed if it works well

I don't like to setup my environment over and over, that's why i have .dot files in github lol

"I think we get way too caught up in our tools." I disagree with this sentiment. We're programmers. Our tools are our bread and butter, whether it's a library, a language, or even an editor. Opting for a simpler setup with batteries included that's easier to configure isn't you being less concerned about your tools. If you're using VSCode you're likely still concerning yourself with plugins, linters, language servers, syntax-highlighters, key-bindings, and all that jazz. You're still configuring, just via a different medium than someone who configures via vim/neovim/emacs or what have you. I understand the general points of this video: 1. You're just trying to get down and dirty with the code. 2. Obsessing over micro-optimizations to your workflow is a distraction. 3. You want to reduce friction of sharing your machine with someone and having them be able to code on it. No matter what your setup, we're all about point number 1. Anyone is subject to point 2, even if you're on VSCode. And for point 3, before I even knew Vim, I've hopped onto people's machines with VSCode installed with the Vim-extension, so there's no guarantee that even "simple" setups solve this problem. And lastly, I know that you're not actively trying to throw shade at config junkies, but you'd have to be tone-def as a viewer to not pick up on the shade-throwing undertones. Edit: Spelling

I can borrow somebody else their computer as well, just need to git clone my dotfiles and go code in (neo)vim :D The rest I keep vanilla though. Either Ubuntu or OSX, pretty much no changes.

I am a heavey Neovim user now, I could definitely use VSCode no problem, but I would desperately need my vim keybindings for editing code.

Amen to your ending statement. I have this mindset with a lot of things I approach in life and I have became very good at many things quickly. People around me think I'm very smart, but I'd say I'm not smart, I'm simple.

Does switching laptops happen to you a lot? That's kind of a strange requirement.

How often are you sharing laptops with coworkers? Seems a bit contrived?

Fuuuuuuuuuuq... thanks for the enlightenment on cmd + tilde

I thinkThePrimeagen uses so complex things like Rust, Vim and etc, because he has ADHD and ADHD guys loves complexity :)

PREACH BROTHER! I use CMD+tab/tilde religiously. The only other shortcut I'd add to this list is CMD+1-9 for switching between tabs in Chrome. Ideally put the tabs you toggle between the most in the 1-4 slots so you can use the shortcut with one hand.

I would say customize your machine to your liking - along with some dotfiles and scripts to recreate your environment. Starting out, you'll want to tweak all sorts of things, but eventually, you'll reach the point of diminishing returns tweaking everything. It seems downright silly to abstain from workflow optimizations as long as they aren't excessive. On another note, I don't really understand the "borrow your coworker's laptop" segment was very odd for me. This is not something I've done or intend to do at any point in the future.

NeoVim for vin oh shit, win

I agree: in a team that does physical pair programming it can be nice if everyone has a simple setup - so I don't have to struggle when using someone else's computer. But if someone has a custom setup I don't mind. It can be a nice way of comparing setups and finding the sweet spot. If everyone always used the same setup I think we'd miss out on some nifty things. Pair programming is a great way to learn work flow tricks, by watching how others operate. I have learned a lot just by watching team members with a different OS. And as a former Windows user who couldn't live without 50-50 window tiling on my Mac, I think some Mac users saw the benefit of that and installed Magnet thanks to me.

Love it! I was drowning in a sea of workspaces not long ago, clicking Ctrl Left and Right to find the one I wanted. Using more than 1 monitor just made it worse. Got a new laptop 2 weeks ago, and decided workspaces wasn't working for me, went with the same approach, just one workspace, and even just a single monitor. Same with apps open, trying to keep it focused to whatever I have to do in the moment and closing everything when finished. It feels great and I feel I can focus much better. One thin I added was Raycast to replace Spotlight. It has some extras that are useful. The one I've been using the most is the window alignment. Could also use an app, but I had issues with the keybinds conflicting when in vscode and I never bothered fixing it, issue doesn't happen with raycast. Oh, another thing I do, and I don't know where I picked it up, but I add a shortcut to bring up the terminal, I usually use the key just above the tab, don't use it for anything most of the time anyway, and its handy to bring the terminal up on a single key press.

I totally disagree I left Vscode to neovim and I don't think I will ever go back one thing you can't do on vs code is jump in and out of files within seconds especially without the mouse and the fuzzy finder Ctrl + p isn't any better either

I thought going full-screen on Mack is the only option… Thanks to your video, I learned that I can maximize window easily without having to swipe between them… As a Linux user, that was the main pain point that I had while working on my work MacBook. THANK YOU

The ONLY thing I really require from my workspace is to have some form of manual keyboard-based window tilling. If I can split windows with a keyboard, I'm fine. But that said... Vim users do look kinda epic tho

Your manager was better and faster because he had more experience at the time lol not because of he didn't have a in depth set up.. but good vid nonetheless

Finally I agree with you on something lol... Used to do the whole arch wm thing... Now I just use stock Ubuntu with VS Code, stock terminal, 100% reproducible, trivial to setup. Yes it's marginally slower switching windows but my job is programming not switching windows

If you are coding in windows/wsl and have a 49" ultrawide display, I recomend power toys, pin everything except VS Code and use workspaces to move between vscode instances keeping your browser in all workspaces.

Yes! This deserves so many more views! People (myself included) get stuck in their learning and divert their attention. Map isn’t working? I should learn Linux and install i3 with vim and rice the whole thing. No, fix the problem and keep being productive.

As a long time vim users who uses only the closest to vanilla vim and neovim as possible I completely agree with that. I always tell people they should know how to use vim but when asked about what editor to learn I never recommend vim. On my machine using vim I am a god and I feel like one, when I need to do stuff on someone else's machine I feel like a monkey trying to type on an foreign language keyboard. I still will stay on vim because I like the god feeling it gives you but most people should not use vim.

Honestly, this is a great counter to the popular idea that you can't be an efficient programmer if you don't have a tiling window manager and vim in the terminal for code. I do think internalizing basic vim keybindings for whatever IDE / code editor is a huge value add.

My tmux setup literally looks like that. I think I get your point about being able to share your pc. But, I never ever share my mac so yeah having customized workflow where you don't have to think about how to do what you want to do helps a tiny bit.

I decided to wean off of vscode the moment I measures a Python debugging step to take 150ms. I'm so done with my slow piece of shit work laptop, I'm willing to put more hours into getting a nice neovim setup (nicely saved in my dotfiles repo, of course), because having software that's that slow is really demotivating for me. And (for now) I can just git clone my dotfiles, run a self-made install script for base dependencies (npm, stow, nvim itself), I then run the 'stow' command on my nvim config and I can be off to the races! I probably would've had the same basic setup as you, if my work laptop wasn't that bad.

I think a lot of people obsess with their environment and claim that tweak it a lot for productivity purposes, when in reality they just like doing it and feel productive tampering with their config, which becomes a form of procrastination disguised as seeking productivity. One can definitely customize too much, there is a point of diminishing returns. I have kind of noticed myself going down that road, so one needs to be careful.

I put so much shit on my environment that it became difficult even for me to use my own environment properly

I thought you would atleast be using vim keybindings in vscode

based once again. i also used be messing around with i3, polybar, emacs, etc while in college and though while fun did realize it is just a waste of time as well shortly after college. my setup is similar, though i do use macs "workspaces" that is similar to i3, just swipe my three fingers on the pad to side to change. Though my second window is just for listening to youtube videos, podcasts, and twitch while i work. Nice way to separate my "work mode" from "waste time" mode.

Coding faster is useless anyway, code smarter not faster And If like me you hate window switching just buy 3 screens and never look back