Stop Configuring Your Environment | Prime Reacts 

Learning Neovim and playing with its configuration made programming fun. felt like a game!

I think it's very simple... 1. people like to procrastinate 2. aesthetics are the easiest thing in the world that we can use to re-excite and re-energize ourselves in order to jump back into that flow dogg

I tend to do what you do - every year or so, spend a day tearing down and rebuilding my config. The thing I do differently is in the days that follow, I'll update it at the beginning/end of the day to address any annoyances I have with the new setup. This allows me to analyze if I'm still using the best tools for the job, stay up to date with the things I use, and keep the knowledge of how my tools work fresh, so I'm not afraid to make changes to my "golden" setup

"No one uses default vs code". Well... I use defaul vs code. I just download any most popular or most common extension there is and stick to it. I want to have some basic synthax highlighting, code completion and go-to-definition, and that's all.

Mine is also never perfect and I can always find something to do. Yet I move on. Sometimes when I'm bored at weekends or watched an interesting video that inspired me or when I experienced problems when editing, then I go back to the config and either try to fix a simple problem or re-evaluate the entire setup. The research that is going into also makes the understanding of my tools better.

Man, this wisdom applies to so many things. When I was an wee apprentice electrician, I remember wanting all the cool tools and the perfect tool-pouch configuration. Someone said, “First, know the job; adjust accordingly.” Go figure, the more I got to know the job; the more I knew what I needed. It’s ironically like training a neutral network, I think.

omg I literally do that timeboxing myself. Usually in January when things are still quiet after the christmas break, I'll spend at most a day or two going through and checking my environment. Usually by then there's a load of updates that have come out for the tools I use, so it's good to just make sure I've got everything stable and configured close enough to maximising productivity.

I actually identify with this, and I've stopped on neovim. I'm working on some embedded things and EVERY SINGLE TIME I launch up one of the AMAZING IDEs (Clion, QTCreator, Eclipse) there's always one thing that doesn't work. The completion, the build system, the compiler flags, the plugins, crashes, the cmake configurations, the launch configurations,... While with neovim I just load up the venv, build it once to have the compile_commands.json, and, incredibly, it just works

"What is your editor" is the "What paint brushes do you use" of the programming world. Often asked by beginners who think, that it's the tools alone doing the job. <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="446">7:26</a> If you only had "one choice" it wouldn't be much of a choice. Only "use it" or "don't". Which, in case of an LSP for example would, translates to "Be able to do your job efficiently" or "Don't do your job efficiently and get fired". My view on this is, that things will change over time. The way we think changes. We discover new tools and ways to do things. I tend to do all my tinkering over the weekend then push changes to github and pull them on my work PC. Over the week, I can see, what worked, and what didn't. Rinse repeat. That does not mean I do it every weekend. Only if i come across a new plugin or setup a new language to learn.

Thanks, this reminded me I should re-configurate my environment 😂

You don't want to build a pickax that builds pickaxes. What you really want is a meta-pickax factory factory that produces meta-pickax factories (among other things) that produce meta-pickaxes that build pickaxes.

I decided to do the same a while back. One of the best decisions I've made in my tech life.

I don't know who your video editor is, but he/she does such a stellar job. Superb. 👍

Another thing I like to do for longer projects is mark down if any changes in style can improve my existing tools. I've seen times where declaring the path in one string `"/rest/endpoint"` instead of composing it `BASE_PATH + "/endpoint"` let my IDE/LS find more usages of the endpoint between applications. Similar to tuning the configuration to improve your productivity, tuning your approach to improve your tool's productivity. And the nice part is that typically translates into writing less clever code.

Great video! What shell do you use? /s

It's the same thing as premature optimization, but instead of whatever project you're building; it's your environment. You should fix the problems when they appear. Don't try to fix all possible problems, not even knowing if you'll even encounter them.

I see tinkering as a hobby like anything else. It's doesn't need to be related to what I do as a developer, it's something fun and I enjoy it. We can't see everything that's not work as "procrastination"

I used to fall into this trap a lot, but I think everything reaches an enlightenment point where they no longer feel this need anymore. It also massively helps to have engaging / challenging work to focus your time on instead. I used to tweak thing a lot to try and distract myself from boring / mundane work I was avoiding.

building a pickaxe so you can build your factory building factory...

the same thing applies to software development. Software is never done, there's always more to do, but if you're developing software for a business, and not for fun, you have to know when it's "good enough" and move on to the next thing.

Damn! now thats a great article.

That AA bit got me <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="105">1:45</a> 😂

I use Logseq and org-roam (Emacs plugin) for my notes and my knowledge base. I added minimum plugins to configurations. Furthermore, I improved my note-taking skills with Zettenkasten method, so I had old notes as a mess, but I can find new notes faster now. If it is really hard to find an old note, then I will make a refactor. I use mostly org-roam, but I still use Logseq for some cases, for example, whiteboard. Logseq was simpler than Obsidian for me, but it is also powerful, give it a try. I use literature programming for my Emacs config, so I have a block about a plugin (config code, notes, ...). After, code blocks will be united to make the configuration. It also helps me.

<a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="245">4:05</a> If someone asks about your config doesn't mean they're obsessed. It's just as likely they just want to use it and not bother creating their own

I like ricing because it's a creative outlet for someone who's very technical and "programmer-y" like myself. I like playing with the colors, fonts, and all sorts of things to create a unique aesthetic that is easy on my eyes. But I don't pretend like it's a necessary part of my workflow lol.

NixOS really helps me. It is a bit of cost upfront to make a config, but the defaults are generally so reasonable that all I do is enable a few modules, change a couple things, then the only changes I regularly make are just adding packages that I need while doing work. Ripgrep for example

Sometimes you don't want to know how the sausage is made, but the sausage takes 2 minutes to open and grinds your computer to a halt, so you switch sausages to a lighter one with great motions and end up having to understand a bit of how it's made.

I didn't realize other people did the once-a-year config session. I usually end up doing one every December.

What's the editor/terminal that you use?

ABSOLUTELY *do* learn Vim motions, not just to be ready to use Vim, but because there's so many awesome programs out there that use Vim motions

I use almost-default VSCode. Obviously have to install _some_ plugins to work with anything besides webdev, but I actually like the default (dark) theme. Otherwise I "wait for frustration" as you said, maybe change one or two settings to alleviate a particularly flow-breaking issue. If I were ever to hit some kind of customization critical mass, I'd just write my own freaking editor.

There is a middle ground I guess : I have a pretty Qtile config. It took me 2-3 days to get (I was using GNOME before so this was my first tiling DE). But now that it works I don’t feel compelled to try every alternative out there. I am investing in Neovim though because vim motion seem like a major productivity boost during code edition.

The thing with vim motions is that once I learned them, I wanted to code more. Which is good, right? Yes, but also no. I also noticed that I was progressively thinking less and less, to the point that I was writing all kinds of useless things, just so my vim motion skill don't deteriorate.

Neovim confing is one and typing with it's magical movements is the most fun thing I do code wise. which is kinda sad, but it is what it is. I take that enjoyment. We take those.

as many people say, having a pretty terminal and having this cool looking hackerman enviroment inspires to write more [shitty] code and do something. If no mood to do that for months, just add a new keybinding in nvim and there it is, next day I have more inspiration to do the real job.

What editor do you use?

"I think the Soviet Union agrees with this logic." 😂 I spat my food out all over my phone

I update my settings when I have an immediate need, or when I see something in a video or blog that might improve my workflow. And after I add the new configuration, I evaluate it for a month or two. If it no longer makes sense, I remove it.

How does he configure the search functionilty at the beginning with ctrl-f? looks really neat

Man people are 100% writing these articles just so prime will react to them. Most articles now just seems like stuff we've heard from Prime already.

What's the font you guys use for RU-vid?

If something bothers me enough, I will fix it right away. But that happens rarely enough, I probably also end up with 2 or 3 days a year. For the most part, I don't really need to change anything. Chose my colour scheme at the start. Never changed it. Only reason I changed my font is people commenting on how hard to read it is whenever I shared my screen. Don't really notice a difference in legibility myself, but the new one is apparently better. Changed my terminal emulator once to get GPU acceleration. Some TUI programs were noticeably slow before, otherwise I wouldn't have seen a need to change. Overall, if you just stick to "if it ain't broke, don't fix it", you'll escape this configuration hell that many apparently fall into.

Yeah, it eats time like nothing else. But at least for me, I arrive at a stable point that serves me exceedingly well for a couple of years until the whole cycle starts again. After a couple of those, I have arrived at setups I truly like and, at the very least, feel productive and content in.

<a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="504">8:24</a> i feel personally attacked ...

I think there's a fine line to find, but when you start programming, I believe it's ok to spend hours trying new software, it took me at least 1 month to be as productive in Neovim as I was in eclipse, than it took me 2/3 days learning about yabai for windows management, and 2/3 days for tmux, probably 2 days for lldb, a few more days for nnn, stow, fzf, etc, but in then end it's worth it, I can program so well so fast, and iterate so quickly.

<a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="119">1:59</a> Chorus of "Hi Bill"s

"Talking to a girl doesn't make you happy" prime badmouthing talking with women. And prepared self-promotion through the article! He knew! But what gets me is college/uni teachers telling you to study/make a lot more than they ask. My experiences in unis has been that there's way more stuff to do than you have time. Like beyond 5/5 grade you don't have social life, time to work or clean your apartment. Particularly with coding where you're just stuck at times until it clicks and the pace is shocking. At least in the first classes, maybe it calms down in later years, but the classes I've taken would've been cool if that was the only thing you did. It was fun before the other classes started to pick up the pace and you had all week for the weekly exercises, but when other classes picked up, you no longer had all day to do the weekly exercises to keep up properly. And then you had assignments on top of the exercises, and the exercises kept getting more difficult, and towards the end of the semester you had to start choosing which classes to try and finish because your time was spread way too thin to pass everything because you put so much time into coding. At the end of the semester you were on the verge of burnout when you were supposed to consider internships, and you hadn't had any time to consider your own life, hobbies or programming projects on your free time.

I will be honest, i started using neovim 2 months ago and still in the process of tinkering with it to get what I want. But in the process I noticed that when coding I am way way more productive than in any other code editor I have EVER used.

Definetly not me building a whole rust binary, just to customize my output in the waybar 💀

There was the jelly bean experiment. If you give people 3 choices theyre happy with their choice. Give them 20 choices, they regret what they picked.

i don’t just timebox, i time-kickbox. i muay thai that bastard for 20 seconds and never look at it again

I believe this extends to web frameworks, libraries, and other tools. Sometimes you need to find the good enough and get really good at it. Rather than always jumping around.

I like to take notes about pain points or ideas during workdays, and then only do config things on the weekends. 👍

What theme do you use?

Oh yeah. I can't imagine how much time I spent on configuring Neovim, kitty config and shortcuts, setting the window tiling manager (Yabai), vimium extension, creating keymaps layer for my mechanical keyboard, configurating zsh, fish, tmux which I don't use it anymore. It's a complete rabbit hole.

Had a coworker who still was on Ubuntu 18.04 when 22.04 shipped, while I broke my whole setup with upgrading on day 0 of release. Since then I mostly just use LTS and Stable versions of everything. But somehow I can't stop changing my font daily... I swear on some days some of them are more readable than others...

I only change things if I get annoyed.

that screentearing is straight OUT of compton

Once you get obsessed with configuring everything, you can take breaks but it'll still be annoying to be snappy in ways you know you could prevent, I'd say window managers on Linux are really easy to start configuring nonstop

One other important reason for configuring your environment is accessibility. If you're getting eyestrain despite taking frequent breaks, or having trouble reading or processing information on the screen, then you should absolutely change your config/setup to deal with that.

My eyesight is horrible. Fonts and colors do impact my comfort and, by extension, productivity. But I had my preferences dialed in years ago. When I upgrade to a new version of my IDE I only have to spend a few minutes tweaking new things that have been added.

This could have been summed up as don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good

Pro-Tip: Work for an hour in Visual Basic for Applications in Excel and after that every other environment is at least okay.

I actually use the default VSCode config with some extensions.... is that bad? I haven't been frustrated yet and I've been working for 1.5 years

I've worked with too many developers who while away days at a time screwing with their configuration. Get good with a slim loadout, and you're productive anywhere.

I use standard mode (not dark mode) vanilla Visual Studio 2022 at work. AND I LIKE IT.

building tools is BOSS.

"I don't care about those things". Other people do. Calm the fuck down, Bill Burr.

We shouldn't optimize for the extremes of analysis paralysis. That it lowest denominator stuff. We should instead build the skills needed to make decisions when there are many options. Good heuristics for filtering down options is one general example.

If once a year is too infrequent for you, maybe set aside a "tinkering tuesday" where (AFTER WORK) you tinker with your config for an hour. If you're not satisfied after your tinkering hour, tough. go back to your old setup until next Tuesday, resume.

I try to never change the defaults ever

build the builder that builds builders that build builders. In all seriousness though, the reason is not procrastination it's that we spend HOURS looking at this crap and so want to look as nice as we can make it

i add git on vscode where it points to github changes,docker, module size checker,auto import,tabnine

I kinda just install some relevant extensions in vscode - fira code font, eslint, some generic dark theme that looks good enough. If I find that I need or want some extra feature several weeks later, then I find an extension for it, if it exists. I don't care to be configging every few months or days. Simply "when I need or stop needing a feature"

I care little about the font. Integrations, tools, shortcuts - that I care about. The less I need to context switch teh get stuff done, the better.

Only config I did was switching to dark mode after a couple years to make my dying battery last longer. Not because I flashbanged myself.

lmfao brooo got so high on life when his name was brought up haha awesome

I think I have the only legit excuse to tinker with font and color in my editor. I have dyslexia so font and color really do make a difference for my productivity.

much like the inventor of lithium ion batteries, your editor config can J-B Goodenough

I just have powershell 7 and vscode and both of them using the same base16 color set so they match, and then I add whatever I need as I go when I discover a problem with my setup

I have spent more time than I should finding a good colour blind theme for vscode

I'm German and am astounded by how American breakfast cereal aisles are half the size of whole German supermarkets.

Learned this the hard way sadly

I'm just dragging my .emacs from more than 20 years ago nearly unchanged wherever I go, did not ever feel a need to refine it further...

Was "Bill" a random name you pulled from a hat?

<a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="224">3:44</a> We should all have policy of incessantly asking what someone's config is so that one day every developer will have a policy of not answering those types of questions. Thought the problem with that is it's just another flawed version of RTFM used against the curious and new learners who don't yet grok configs for themselves.

I've been using the same basic .emacs file for over 25 years with minor tweaks as I've used new languages. Build an environment that makes you productive. Find out what is not productive by running into issues naturally. Don't seek them out.

I will resume the solution: have good sense. Thank you

<a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="360">6:00</a> Hmmm... excuse me? Okay, okay, I've moved the side bar to the right, because that was where I was used to seeing it from a previous editor.

The 20/80 Rule: Just 20% of work can get you 80% of result.

i am one of those people who can't stop tinkering

That's why i prefer Jetbrain's IDE other everything else. no config. It just works out of the box

Your font is Fira Code

<a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="315">5:15</a> this same argument could be applied to actual programming too… how much time is wasted tweaking and configuring and designing code to feel and look good that doesn’t actually progress the task towards completion. This work is good at first, but suffers from diminishing returns over time.

Build a pickaxe that builds pickaxes? So like a hammer?

Wake n bake to prime 🌲🔥🌳💨💪🤪

I spent a big chunk of my day codig, so I would like to have a pleasing environment

Adjusting configuration is my job, tho! (and it pays very well)

Idk, I just like playing with my config. It's fun!

Why would I stop? Configuring is fun.