NeoVim after a couple of years learning process

NeoVim are really excellent tools, which are not only text editors also could be used as IDEs. Nevertheless, it's well-known the learning curve issue and the difficulty to start using.

NeoVim after a couple of years learning about

NeoVim is well-known tool and many of us have heard about it as a text editor. Its creators describe NeoVim as: a refactor, and sometimes redactor, in the tradition of Vim.

About Vim, I have worked both editors but owing to some performance issues and a weird misfunctioning with the Highlight plugin I switch completely to NeoVim; so this post will be oriented to NeoVim and some plugins, however the recomendations and thoughts could be for Vim as well. The majority of developers and tech people have used or heard NeoVim as a complex/difficult and highly customizable text editor, just few have worked with it as an IDE or adopted as a primary text editor to develope for real projects.

I imagine some questions have arised seeking information regarding NeoVim.

If NeoVim is so complex/difficult why do you should give it a whirl? The answer is you don’t have to, similar to any tool you can decide which is your more comfortable and more suitable for you. In my case, I decided to use NeoVim due to two main reasons. First, I dislike while I am writing specifically reading a large code, the lag effect to render text. I can accept this to video but no for text. Second, I try to reduce the use of mouse. Not for speed or writing performance, more for reduce my hand movements.

Once you have decided to swap to NeoVim will you use another editors? In short Yes! Different problems requieres different and specific solutions. I have worked with a large number of editors: Notepad, Notepad++, Atom, Sublime Text, Brackets, of course Vim and NeoVim. Also a plethora of IDEs: Netbeans, Eclipse, Xcode, Jetbrains suite (Goland, CLion, RubyMine, Pycharm, Android Studio). And always I need to switch if I need a specific feature. For instance, for mobile development is much easier use Android Studio and Xcode. If it’s possible I install the vim emulator plugin.

My journey with Vim started in ²⁰⁰⁹⁄₂₀₁₀ when in a college subject, a teacher reach us with a topic Vim and taught us Vim movements, I remember my first thought: this is a completely waste of time, I can do the same with a much easier text editor and using mouse. But I tried I learned a couple of movements and commands: hjkl and w, :w and :q!. To me that was enough. With the years, I could put that knowledge in practice but I felt that I didn’t need more. In 2016, I had a project in PHP and a bunch of files had at least 2.000 LoC, so I wanted a faster text editor to load that amount of LoC. Seeking for a faster text editor I found that the quickest was using a clean Vim. Then, I found a graphic which showed the learning curve of NeoVim/Vim and how at the beginning Vim was so difficult and with the time everything was easier, this graphic motivated me and I decided I can learn this thing without any problem.

The next step: install Vim and to make it better, some article showed tha the best solution was to use: tmux + vim. I also installed a plugin for tmux allowed me to see some spotify information or something like that. Then I got a list of must have plugins for Vim and I installed everything, including highlights, nerdtree, lint and so on. When I was kind of comfortable with my setup, I open my project, and when using tmux it was everything but the expected, the performance was awful. The amount of pugins that I had I couldn’t identify when to use any of them. Long story short, I resigned to use tmux + vim. But I liked use the movements, so every IDE I decided to install the Vim emulator.

Do you use NeoVim right now? Since 2016 I use Vim or Vim Emulators within my IDEs. Since 2019, thanks to a youtuber and his awesome attitude I decided to give it a whirl, I tried to use NeoVim as much as I can.

How do you solve the performance problem? Keep it simple. This youtuber recommended that only include plugins you would need. And this way I solve my performance issue, I created a function and I am able to identify which Plugin is taking too long. But the most valuable advice: Keep everything simple.

How can you improve your skills? This is the most important question, step by step. My advice, is start with a simpler and cleaner Vim, try to learn without any Plugin. When you feel that you need, really need, something extra install a single Plugin, and learn everything about that Plugin. You can add more plugins but always ask yourself, do I really need this plugin?. Once you decided, try to learn as much as you can. In my .vimrc or ini.vim the first two months I only had vim-polyglot, undotree. I didn’t need to much, then I wanted to open quickly my files so I installed fzf. A couple of months ago, I learned you can open a terminal inside NeoVim using :terminal, I created the necessity I needed to split my current window in three so I created a nnoremap (command) and that splits my current window in three and at the bottom there is a terminal. While I was using the terminal, exiting from the terminal inside NeoVim was to complex so I created an easir map to exit the terminal.

That said, the idea is to keep as simple as you can and learn with the tools you already have. You will see if something that you want to do it’s possible and learn how to do that. That way you will learn the necessary and master your workflow.

Some links and resources

My .vimrc file

The Primeagen .vimrc file

The Primeagen youtube Channel

How-to use ClickUP API to integrate Apple Shortcuts

I changed from Trello to ClickUp, I figured out how-to tackle an integration issue using Apple Shortcut. This is the How-To.

Apple Shortcuts and ClickUp

5 weeks ago I decided to make a change and give a whirl to a new application for task management. So I did, From Trello to ClickUp.

How did I get to ClickUp? I searched through the internet and several reviews platforms and some apps come away: ClickUp, Monday, Wunderlist (Microsoft To-Do), and Todoist.

And the story began, I visited the websites and look for screenshots (first sight is important for me). I was looking for a new UI, with the following things: KanBan dashboard, manage subtasks, create recurring tasks, and easy integrations or API if I created an app by myself. After this first filter: UI and Kanban I took the first two options.

ClickUp and Monday are excellent options, nevertheless, I needed a free account and I realized that Monday is more team-oriented. But I decided ClickUp after checking a Use Case in their website where they put an impressive example: How to use it for personal productivity, Personal Task Management.

After one week I think the Mobile App is pretty awesome, however, I think is very difficult to create a new task. To tackle this problem, I researched the API and how to integrate Apple Shortcuts to ClickUp And I want to create this tutorial to explain the process.

1. Create API key in ClickUp, I followed this tutorial, I decided to create a Personal API Key instead of enable Oauth 2.0, due to complexity.

2. Get ClickUp list or project id. I have a default list where I add all new tasks and then using the app I send to the proper project or list. I use this id as <default_list_id> in the URL in next step.

3. Create Apple Shortcut, then create a script deploys a question about the new task name

1. Set response to a new variable. Create an POST API request to https://api.clickup/api/v2/list/<default_list_id>/task. The JSON POST body must have name (task name) and status for the task which I always choose open.

1. Set Authorization header with Personal API Key.

1. Test the script

1. Open ClickUp to see new created task

Conclusions

The API is quite easy to use and integrate and well documented. With 30 minutes invested, I got my PoC and now I am using it!

How did I include Software Design to this blog

This blog was built using Golang and Gin Gonic, but more important than this is the architecture and solution.

How did I build this blog

First of all, this blog was built using Go and Gin gonic, then I want to tell a little of the history about building process and changes made to this website. In the beginning, this was only a static website for my Company: Garcesaparicio.com. And then, some improvements and features were feasible to me, to make a better website and to learn more and more. The first feature, add profiles to each team member. And thanks to an idea that came from my Girlfriend (Her blog), I started to write a blog as well.

With each fuature burst a bunch of problems. A dynamic website requires: Storage for the information, and a logic to retrieve information. The easiest way that came to my head was store in a relational database, or for this blog is NoSQL (common use for blogs). using document based like MongoDB. However, as I mentioned in a previous post, I am working with AWS S3 so I thought I could use AWS S3 to store all needed data and the responsible would on the backend in Go.

This decison lead me to think in solution related with storage logic, how to retrieve the information and then to manipulate all the gathered data.

In this post I will tackle two main points: Data Solution, how data is storead and manipulated, and architecture solution, how Go backend interacts with all services.

Data Solution

Once the storage service was decided and set up. I needed to implement a solution that can be modified in a simple way.

First problem was how would I store the information. I got an idea (easiest) from collections structure in MongoDB, using AWS S3 buckets (as a Database) and Folders as Collections. I choose the following folder structure for the website.

- bucket # AWS S3 Bucket
-- blogs # blog Folder
--- okgarces # My blog
---- how_this_works_23.February.2020.md
---- ...
-- team # Team Folder
--- okgarces.json # My information in a JSON
--- ...

To consume AWS S3 and use this structure, I built a layer to connect services and manage the retrieve, search process, and works such as Data Access Layer.

For the blog, the structure allows to each member have its own folder where to store blog posts in a markdown files. The next issue, was to think the structure for markdown files, why? Because, I needed to store metadata and basic information like the title, a brief description, and so on. In the following session I will describe the solution.

Files and information structures

The first blog version stored all blog information in the same Json that included information about a team member. In the next fragment I show the information required. For the blog session the metadata is stored in separate values and the content was stored as a simple string. Each post must have all the data: title, description, content, tags and created date.

  "name": "",
  "photo": "",
  "tech_skills": {
    "labels" : [],
    "scores": []
  },
  "language_skills": {
    "labels" : [],
    "scores": []
  },
  "blog": [
  {
    "title": "",
    "description": "",
    "content": "",
    "tags": [],
    "created_at": ""
  },
  "description": ""
  ]

For the next version I decided to separate the blog entries for many reasons. It is much easier to manage each entry as a separate file, each file could have the required data, and finally if I wanted to write using markdown to add richer content.

To tackle this new feature, I had to think in a solution to store metadata, in order to this, I wrote a new file structure only for blog posts. The file has two parts divided by [\END_SETTINGS\] this way I identify the first part, metada information, and last one, blog post content.

The next code fragment shows an example of new file.

title: How I include Software Design on this blog
description: This blog was built using Golang and Gin Gonic, but more important than this is the architecture and solution.
image: https://s3.amazonaws.com/garcesaparicio.com/blogs/images/Heroku-arch-ga.png
tags: golang, gin gonic, architecture
date: 23.February.2020
\[END_SETTINGS\]

Blog post using Markdown

The change from old structure and the new one, was really easy. But this time the markdown information should be parsed to HTML.

Manipulate information

As I wrote above, I use markdown as the language to write the posts, due to incredible flexility, easy, and the result is really pretty. Nevertheless, to parse from markdown to HTML I found multiple solutions. The are some libraries to parse these files, however Github has a well known flavored markdown and offers an API.

Interact with the Github API was straightforward. With a simple POST you can obtain the parsed HTML as shown in the image below.

Architecture Solution

The intention of this section is to show an overview of the interaction between Website App deployed in Heroku and the multiple services AWS S3 and Github API to process the blog posts.

Process

The process is quite simple, to retrieve information, I built an adapter (in a next post I would talk about backend architecture), this seeks all the data from AWS S3 API from my bucket and the folder: blogs, where blog posts are stored. Then for each blog post I would get the information (such as is shown in 1, 2), this is a markdown file. The last step is to gather HTML from markdown file and for this I use Github API and get the parsed HTML (3 step in pic).

Overall, this is a straightforward solution, and scalable due to interaction between scalable and well known services.

Conclusion

With this solution, I could built a scalable website storing all data in AWS S3 and all markdown files manipulated through Github API.

A road through Functional Programming

After several basic tutorials about functional programming, I realized I would never be capable of improve my knowledge without this concepts.

A road through Functional Programming

Here I will put some relevant links, I could learn just a little bit more about Functional Programming.

Important Links

1. http://lambdaconf.us/downloads/documents/lambdaconf_slfp.pdf
2. https://caiorss.github.io/Functional-Programming/haskell/Functional_Programming_Concepts.html
3. https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/an-introduction-to-the-basic-principles-of-functional-programming-a2c2a15c84/
4. https://hackernoon.com/why-functional-programming-matters-c647f56a7691

From SOLID to Functional Programming

• S (SRP) in FP a function creates ALWAYS the same output for the same arguments this is called referential transparency
• O (OCP) in FP there is a concept called algebraic data types, have a look how it relates to Class hierarchies and what problem both try to solve 1
• L (LSP) Liskov Substitution Principle is Contravariance 2
• D (DIP) in general functional programming achieves abstraction through function composition, there are also other mechanism with the help of category theory(for example monoid or functor), for “Dependency Injection” 3

Took from: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/165356/equivalent-of-solid-principles-for-functional-programming

F# Basis

• Overview of Types in F#

  • https://fsharpforfunandprofit.com/posts/overview-of-types-in-fsharp/
  • https://docs.microsoft.com/es-es/dotnet/fsharp/tour

• Testing in F#

  • https://devonburriss.me/review-fsharp-test-libs/
  • http://xunitpatterns.com/Parameterized%20Test.html

Functional programming

• Category Theory in Life: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ho7oagHeqNc
• A pragmatic introduction to Category Theory: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MvQxNm5gn8g
• From Rails to Elm and Haskell - Richard Feldman: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5CYeZ2kEiOI
• Por fin Entiendo que son las mónadas: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SUR04ghlE2s
• What is a monad by Graham Hutton: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t1e8gqXLbsU
• Why is not FP the Norm?: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QyJZzq0v7Z4
• Functional Programming in 40 minutes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0if71HOyVjY
• I used ELM and I lost my Job: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RFrKffrKCeU

What is a monad?

• Haskell is an structure use to add support for Impure or Side effects like IO Monad, Reader monad
• A monad is pattern to improve composition of functions, composition that you can check as repeateable
• A monad needs a type, a bind function.

What is Optics?

Strategy or Pattern to solve a common problem in immutable values. If you need to change a value of a certain immutable object the change is very complicated. Here Optics is the solution through Lens and Prism. The first one, is to get and set values in Product Types (Tuples and Records) the last one is to solve problem in Sum Types (Option Types and Union).

Advanced Concepts in Recursion.

• Recursive and Corecursive
• Catamorphism: Go from general to specific, like apply a Reduce function to a List.
• Anamorphism: Go from specific to General. Creating elements. Work like a generator.

IELTS test versions

Are you thinking in take the IELTS English test and you do not know what version to choose?

Now you have two options for one of the most common English Standard Test

Nowadays, IELTS test can be taken through two ways: Paper Delivered and Computer Delivered, what do you need to choose?. In merely 6 months I have made two attempts to take it, one in each version. Thus, I need to share my full experience making a comparison in each section skill (Listening, Reading, Writing) and additionally my perception of the psychological pressure in both.

Overall

In a superficial analysis the test difficulty is the same in both cases. That means, Paper as well as Computer-delivered have the same sections: Listening, Reading, and Writing, and of course Speaking. And in terms of difficulty, the questions are the equally comparable, hence, there is no difference with difficulty and standard evaluation.

However, I found some contrasts related with the environment and my experience in each attempt.

In the following sections, I will explain my perception in each test part and I will write pros and cons that could help me or anyone in a near future.

Listening

Listening is the first test section, in Paper and Computer-delivered there are four passages and you have to answer 40 questions whose complexity increases when test goes by.

Which are the differences? Environment and tools which help to tackle the test. In Paper, you have one big speaker and in my case I was located in an ample room with other 79 candidates. In Computer-Delivered you are rounded of 19 more each with their own headphones. There you go the first difference: One source of sound for many people and the other your own headphones which you can adjust volume and be more comfortable.

Headphones were crucial for the next issue I experienced: Noise. In listening is important to be focus and understand all dialogues. At the beginning of paper-delivered, I believed I could hear everything, however in the middle of the Listening dialogues I realized there were some problems with the speaker, therefore I could not understand or concentrate on the entire process. On the other hand, my experience in computer-delivered was incredible, I could check the volume and choose my screen height. I felt comfortable and I could hear everything without noise or major problems.

• Pros

  • Computer-Delivered
  • Your own elements: Headphones, Computer, allow to be focus on your listening task.
  • You can check the volume and reduce external noise.
  • Paper-Delivered
  • You can underline key words to follow a dialogue more accurate.

• Cons

  • Computer-Delivered
  • Could impact your performance if you do not feel comfortable working on a computer and using headphones.
  • You can not underline key words (at least I could not).
  • Paper-Delivered
  • Possible external noise.
  • You can not adjust volume or quality of sound.

To sum up, if I have to decide in what I want to repeat, according, to my experience, I would say: Computer Delivered. Merely the pro I could adjust the volume it is a huge difference.

Reading

In both options reading is quite similar, The difference it is your ability to read in a computer screen or in a paper. You need to choose what is the best option according to your needs and you desired score.

There is no major difference, pros and cons is up to you and depends on your abilities.

I would choose any, due to I think there is no relevant difference.

Writing

Writing is really different: First, some people can write in a computer in a faster way (crucial for writing skills). Second, the possibility of change, erase, copy, and paste makes easier the writing task. In paper there is barely time to change or erase, even worse when change is bigger than a single word. For instance, an entire sentence could change and reorder all the paragraph. How can you add a new line in your paper or how you can move words?

Here I have a challenge, write a full paragraph and try to change a word, easy, does not it? Now, try to modify the first sentence adding three words, what do you think now? In your paper you can not do this, in your computer is quite simple.

Another difference: Noise. Listening all the noise made by keyboards can be a huge distractor for your task.

• Pros
  • Computer Delivered
  • Modify and amend sentences.
  • Fast writing
  • Better if you do not have a good calligraphy
  • Paper Delivered
  • No too much noise
• Cons
  • Computer Delivered
  • Noise made by keyboards
  • Paper Delivered
  • No the best option with a bad calligraphy
  • Modify sentences is quite difficult

In my opinion, it is much easier to change, improve, and amend text in Computer than in Paper, that could improve the score in this task.

General Feelings

Computer delivered only have, In my case 20 candidates in a computer room. Paper delivered have at least 80 candidates. I reckon that has a huge impact in your psyche. First, with 80 candidates you can perceive 79 other people stress and yours. The registration process takes more time, in my first attempt that long around 45 minutes or one hour. Computer delivered it took 25 minutes, and we could start earlier but one candidate arrived late. (Actually this was really awesome, $634.000 COP is too much money, to lose the opportunity due to a traffic problems). The feeling was different. Less stressful (This could be skewed because it was my second time and I think this one I studied much more intelligently) Related with personal space, in computer delivered test, you have your own, your computer, your headset, and no major distractions.

Conclusion

Depends on multiple things: How you can apart the stress, how you feel with people around, how you feel comfortable reading, writing, and listening in your own space. You write faster and better in computer or handwriting? Answering these you will have the proper version for you.

If I have to choose again, I would pay for Computer Delivered test. I felt more comfortable. However, this would not improve my English level, only my psyche.

Important links

Important links to learn get an overview of the different options that will help you to understand what is the best version for you.

• IELTS official Computer Preparation
• Magoosh Blog - Resources
• IELTS Liz

Draft - Notes about Lean Startup Book

David Ries Lean Startup Book depicts a bunch of knowledge related with Startup process and most important how to convert any company and project in a constant innovation process

My Notes

So far, the most important concept I could understand in David Ries book is validated learning.

• The main success for a startup can be designed following the proper process

• Take care of these five principles:

1. Entrepreneurs are in any place
2. Entrepreneur spirit is all about management
3. Validated Learning
4. Follow the process: Build-measure-learn
5. Innovation accountability

• What is Genshi Gembutso from Toyota Way?

• When do you have to pivot? Aprendizaje validado. Validación y pivote para empezar a mejorar la empresa. Lo importante es sostener la empresa

• El calor de las tres A: accionable, accesible u auditable. Indicadores Actionable causa efecto

• Análisis de cohortes: Contabilidad de la innovación las decisiones de priorizar objetivo, prueba y feedback

• Que actividades crean valor y cuáles son una forma de despilfarro?

• Preguntas a responder:

  • Que productos quieres los consumidores.
  • Quienes son nuestros clientes?
  • A qué clientes escuchar y a quienes no?

• En contra de lo que se cree habitualmente el letargo y la burocracia no son el destino inevitable a medida que van madurando.

Gin Gonic & Heroku

I want to publish a new website in Heroku using Golang. What did I learn? Here we go!

Making ample number of mistakes

This post can be renamed to Rookie Mistakes. In my development process I found a massive number of issues and hurdles, I will list just a few of them: Neither Heroku did not find all needed dependencies nor srcroot, so I could not deploy. I figured out plenty of new concepts: godep, srcroot, Go Modules, you MUST read first!

After several hours trying to understand, I grasped how to solve my problems and this list of links helped me and achieve my goal of Deploy everything in Heroku: * Amazing Hello World Example with Go and Heroku * Solve problems with Heroku * How to Solve problem related with godep unable to find srcroot: Solve srcroot issues

Note for future me: The Gopath is really important and it is not your source code. It must include all your project. Remember, what the heck is a srcroot and what is the difference between godep and Go Modules.

First steps with Golang & Gin Gonic

What is Golang? For me is a new experience which I decided to invest ample time to create a new project. All this website is made using Golang and Gin Gonic.

How did I build this Blog?

This is my second post and I want to write about my experience with Go and my initial thoughts about this language. First of all, Why did I decide Go? The answer is simple: Only for leaning purposes and due to Tiobe Index graphs results.

Next, I had to find what IDE for GO I must to use, as usual Jetbrains built an amazing product: GoLand, and of course I chose it just because is a Jetbrains Product. And the process began. I designed my app, using a Lean approach: First, writing a list with all my desires requirements, then prioritizing to create an MVP, with the ultimate prioritized functionalities, and finally architecture design.

The outcomes were:

1. For the initial version, the app is to simple to integrate databases, information could be stored in AWS S3 with a standard format: Json, information must include the following information with this format:

  "name": "",
  "photo": "",
  "tech_skills": {
    "labels" : [],
    "scores": []
  },
  "language_skills": {
    "labels" : [],
    "scores": []
  },
  "blog": [
  {
    "title": "",
    "description": "",
    "content": "",
    "tags": [],
    "created_at": ""
  },
  "description": ""
  ]

1. The code must gather that information from AWS S3 and unmarshall the content to be manipulated with Go and Gin Gonic.
2. All new functionalities must be developed in new Go modules, that was the case of: Embedded Survey. In a future post I will depict all the process related with this one.
3. The app must be straightforwardly extendable, the code is going to be refactored several times.

I developed in Go using Gin Gonic framework, and I have multiple comments about learning process:

Here is the list with the most important links to learn and first steps in Go * Gin Gonic Web Framework * Go Website * Tags in Go * Decoding and Encoding in Go

Final Thoughts:

1. Golang is not that easy. Types and Structs are easy to use and understand. Nevertheless, manipulating Json format is another story, in this case you have to use map and multiples embedded Structs to model and manipulate them, this is a hurdle in Web Development.
2. Dependency issues. As far I know, there are solutions to solve the dependency issues with Godeps and since Go1.11 Modules. However, I am using godeps owing to available documentation. In next post I will write about Godeps, Vendoring, and how to deploy in Heroku.
3. It is hard to find Examples in Gin Gonic. It is just my opinion but it is more difficult to find code examples and tutorials than other frameworks. In other hand, the code is well organized and easy to navigate, read, and understand

First Post

The first post is about myself. Also, a brief introduction of what is this blog for.

What is this blog for?

I want to introduce myself and my main motivation to write this Blog. My name is Oscar Kiyoshige Garcés Aparicio, I am a Software Developer with ample desires of learning about everything. That is why I have learnt programming languages, architectures (Not only Software architectures), Robotics, and any topic that I can read about. Since, I found multiple blogs where ideas and solutions come up to help other developers and persons, I decided I would want to have a space to write and express all ideas I have in my mind. As well as it is a space to store my thoughts and findings hoping that will help anyone or my future me.