PyCon.de: vim your Python, Python your vim - Miroslav Šedivý¶

Tags: pycon, python

(One of my summaries of a talk at the 2017 PyCon.de conference).

He has a nice simple keyboard layout. No weird key combinations. He started showing different keyboard layouts and started speaking fluently in en, de, sk, cs, fr, es, it, pl, sv, hu, eo, tr and explaining the various country’s keyboard layouts.

How do you manage all those languages one ONE keyboard with only ONE brain. Switching keyboards is no option. Charmaps are not easy.

There used to be a key called the compose key. It was an actual key on older keyboards. You use compose + two or more keys after each other to get a é or an è, for instance. There’s a x11 keymap for it.

You can map various keys to function as the compose key. The printscreen key or the right control key or windows key, for instance.

Another option is xcape, you can use one key (for instance the caps lock) as both the regular key and as a modifier. Keeping it pressed make it function as a modifier, just pressing and releasing it quickly as a key. So: he uses the caps lock key as both ctrl (=modifier) and escape (=key).

He then switched his presentation to VIM. Like Python, it has a Dutch BDFL :-)

https://xkcd.com/1205/

You’re all typing into editors a lot. It pays off very quickly to learn a real editor like VI or emacs. Do it.

He then showed a couple of VIM plugins he uses. The core point: read the documentation. Read blogs about it. Learn about useful plugins. Discover them.

He recently switched from VIM to neovim. A nice thing about it is that you can write plugins in python. He showed a plugin that checked an email’s recipients. If there are only a few colleagues, the email starts automatically with “hello pietje, klaasje”, if there are external people, the proper company signature is automatically added. Fun.

Personal note: yes, do learn a proper editor. For me, I’m using emacs since 1996. So any effort invested in it has paid of many, many times.

Photo explanation: simply a picture from my train trip (with a nice planned detour through the Eifel) from Utrecht (NL) to Karlsruhe (DE). Gerolstein station in the Eifel.