Use an extensible editor

Plain text won't become obsolete. It helps leverage your work and simplifies debugging and testing. The editor should be an extension of your hand; make sure your editor is configurable, extensible, and programmable. – The Pragmatic Programmer

Lots of people at thoughtbot use Vim as their text editor.

When we use Vim, we type few characters and avoid the mouse. We're productive and more easily achieve flow.

It's great because:

  • Vim is tiny (1.6MB) and starts up instantly.
  • Vim is a well-polished stone by virtue of how long it has been around. It was introduced in 1991 as an improvement on Vi, which itself was written in 1976 by Bill Joy.
  • It has a rich ecosystem of open-source plugins.

In addition to Vim, many folks at thoughtbot use Visual Studio Code or another editor. We believe that it's not so much what editor you use that matters, but how you use it. Investing the time to learn your editor well will make you more productive.

Talk to one of our product experts about building success into your process.