I use JetBrains IDEs for most of my programming tasks, and it works great on my PC. Things change when I need to connect somewhere via SSH and write some scripts on a remote host or just edit a few config files. For a long time, nano was my tool of choice when things got textual. It’s very easy to use, but it has certain limitations. Luckily for me, nano was available pretty much everywhere I went, except my old OpenWRT router. OpenWRT doesn’t have nano and you kind of supposed to use vi. This was the first time I really had to use it, and the experience wasn’t pleasant, to say the least. Time passed, and I started to get curious about vi and vim.

I mentioned this old book a couple of months ago. It was a fun read, and it encouraged me to finally try vi. It’s tough at start, but, the longer I use it, the more exciting it gets. Shells have the same effect. There are many front-loaded things in life, they require serious commitment, and they take a long time to pay off. We’re encouraged to take shortcuts and prioritize quick solutions over learning how to do things in the most productive way. Otherwise, we wouldn’t have Stack Overflow.