DEV Community: Josh Medeski

Popup history with tmux and fzf

Josh Medeski — Wed, 30 Dec 2020 16:36:39 +0000

Many times a minute I use the keyboard shortcut in my terminal to pull up my history. The 80/20 rule states that 80% of the input comes from 20% of the output. Applying that principle to my activity in the terminal means the majority of commands I want to run I

Thankfully fzf wrote a fzf-tmux script that makes it easy to integrate fzf with tmux.

Make sure you have installed the keybindings for your shell (you'll run something like /usr/local/opt/fzf/install in macOS). After running that command your <ctrl-r> command will be bound to your history.

Going one step further, tmux has floating window support. To set your history to popup, add the following variables to your shell.

Here's my configuration with fish:

export FZF_TMUX_OPTS="-p"
export FZF_CTRL_R_OPTS="--reverse --preview 'echo {}' --preview-window down:3:hidden:wrap --bind '?:toggle-preview'"

The -p flag will now change all fzf_tmux behavior to pop up instead of creating a separate pane.

I chose to use --reverse on the <ctrl-r> options because I like the way it looks. I also added an optional preview flag bound to ? as described in the fzf key binding wiki.

I hope you like it! fzf-tmux with popup support has been a game-changer. I had some hesitations moving away from Visual Studio Code, mostly that tmux and neovim felt outdated when it came to visuals. But now, I'm liking this setup MORE than vscode and am excited to continue to tweak the system to be even more stylish and functional than any other IDE out there.

This is a simple change, but having a polish balanced screen makes all the difference for me, here it is one more time:

Thanks for reading, I will continue to post tips and tricks for how to be more productive in the terminal and macOS, hit that follow button if you want to get more articles like this and hit one of those emojis in the sidebar if you liked this tip.

Why I Switched from ZSH to FISH

Josh Medeski — Tue, 30 Jul 2019 15:07:54 +0000

I've been using the zsh terminal with the infamous oh-my-zsh framework for many years now. The features and improvements it makes on plain old bash are impressive. But as my needs change, so does my shell. I made the switch to the fish shell almost a year ago and here is why I switched.

Speed

fish is faster than zsh. Especially when using zsh plugins the loading time alone is significantly slower. But more than that, the overall experience for me feels snappier and more responsive in the fish shell. Since I'm using the terminal to be more efficient and get things done faster than a GUI, speed is one of my top requirements for my shell.

Simplicity

The oh-my-zsh configuration and plugins tend to add complexity to the terminal environment, especially custom aliases. Overall, I have found fish to be much simpler regarding configuration and usage. My config file is only a few lines long and I'm only using one or two plugins for third party utilities (ex: fasd and nvm). I also found a very simple theme that only shows me what I need, similar to my previous zsh theme.

Autosuggestion

This is the main reason I moved to fish. I originally was using the zsh-autosuggestions which is "Fish-like autosuggestions for zsh". This is what drew me to fish, this is by far my most used feature. If I mistype a command, it will show in red to indicate that it's an invalid command. But, more importantly, while I type the prompt auto-suggests my previous commands (by recent and most used). This is far quicker than ctrl+r and usually shows me the command I want 80%+ of the time. Again, this is the main reason I use fish and one of my favorite productivity tools on my computer, period.

Vim Mode

I've been a vim user for many years now. What I love about vim is it's intuitiveness and efficiency (once you've really gotten it down). I know zsh offers a vim-mode but I was happy to learn fish has one as well. It a sort of simplified vi hybrid but it does all I need it to do.

Conclusion

fish is fast, simple, offers powerful autosuggestion and a vim mode. These are the most important thing for me right now in the terminal so I proudly made the switch to this friendly interactive shell and haven't looked back.

What shell are you using? Do you love fish as much as me or found something better? Let me know in the comments!

How to Keep Up with the Front-End Industry

Josh Medeski — Fri, 28 Jun 2019 17:51:19 +0000

Here are some tips while staying up-to-date with any large knowledge set, like programming, the news, or anything!

Watch out for overwhelm and take a break if needed
Recognize you can't know everything
Share what you're learning with coworkers and friends
Follow the people/groups that make you excited about the topic
Contribute to the conversation: write blog posts, Tweet, or record podcasts
Diversify your sources (one person doesn't have all the answers)
Automate where possible (Feedly and Pocket Casts help me)

Resources

Here is a collection of front-end resources for staying up-to-date with all things front-end related (in no particular order).

Email Newsletters

Blogs

Podcasts

Courses

Check out Wes Bos's other courses

Twitter

There are too many people and groups to list here. I've made a Twitter list. Feel free to follow it or pick out individuals that stand out to you. https://twitter.com/joshmedeski/lists/developers/members

I hope this advice and these resources help you in staying up-to-date with the front-end industry! This is a collection of resources that have found helpful over the years and I hope it serves you well.

What resources or tips can you recommend for staying up-to-date with the front-end industry?