Choosing an Editor

• You will spend a great deal of your lives editing code
  • It is important to do it in a comfortable environment
• A good editor will
  • Free you of your mouse
  • Allow you to rapidly create code
  • Decrease fatigue and increase stamina whilst coding
  • Increase productivity
  • Join a community
  • Make you a happy programmer =)
• Most programmers will vehemently defend their choice of editor (including me)

linuxquestions.org Editor Poll

Editor Wars

• SWEs are typically very defensive about two things…
  • Their Shell (zsh,fish,bash…)
  • Their Editor (vi,emacs…)

Vim

Vim

• Emacs users joke that vi has two modes – “beep repeatedly” and “break everything”

  

GNU EMACS

GNU EMACS

• Apparently stands for “Editing MACroS”, however, other alternatives are
  • Escape Meta Alt Control Shift
  • EMACS Makes Any Computer Slow
  • Eventually Munches All Computer Storage
  • Generally Not Used, Except by Middle-Aged Computer Scientists
• vi users enjoy joking that Emacs’s key-sequences induce carpal tunnel syndrome

GNU EMACS

I reccommend Vim (of course)

• Vims keybindings may seem unintuitive, but they are optimized in the sense that once learned they allow you to write and navigate code rapidly!
• To learn the keybindings, type “vimtutor” into your terminal window on saxon
• Vim is extremely customizeable. If you want to change anything about it, you can.
• Large community providing a huge number of plugins
• Excellent plugins available for autocompletion, fuzzy finding, navigation, language integration etc…
• Ships as standard with most linux distributions.

Trending Editors: Sublime

Trending Editors: atom

Shells

• Already have some exposure to bash (bourne again shell)
• Some currently popular shells are
  • zsh “z-shell” especially when combined with oh-my-zsh
  • fish “friendly interactive shell” very user friendly, also oh-my-fish

Terminal Multiplexers

• Allow you to run multiple terminal sessions within a single terminal window
• Tmux or GNU Screen are most common options
• Most consider Tmux superior to screen.

Tmux example

Vim+Tmux+Slimux workflow

• Slimux is a plugin for vim that allows you to send text from vim in one tmux pane to another
• Often useful to have an editor in one tmux pane and an REPL from your favourite language in another
• If the REPL session is on a remote machine then we can edit code locally, but have it execute remotely!
• This means all heavy lifting is done by, say, my office computer whilst my laptop is unburdened and free to watch netflix
• This obsoletes commonly referenced Vim-R-plugin

Vim+Tmux+Slimux workflow

Vim+Tmux+Slimux workflow

Vim+Tmux+Slimux workflow R

Vim+Tmux+Slimux workflow Julia

Vim+Tmux+Slimux workflow Python

awk

[michael@michael ~]$ cat sometable.dat 
"Some Description here that your collaborator decided was useful"
"V1" "V2" "V3"
"1" -0.926279001621519 -0.90179685027722 1.97957280153958
"2" 0.937524731204077 -1.23302316044355 -0.180671760736866
"3" -1.44570215269122 0.817268060335293 0.311498702884293
"4" -0.547354824616171 0.827169714956968 -0.462521312697732
"5" -0.290613900109242 2.11331118379395 0.504731900370643
"6" -1.50689928026228 -0.273155683881863 1.61629032009698
"7" -0.154531591553615 0.201957539158184 -2.37144275790015
"8" 1.06123047151248 -0.527749699949128 0.32923487045257
"9" 1.05843977271672 0.510092464005052 -1.06093331871229
"10" 0.0961074300632977 -0.559597700246554 -0.510204378208016

awk

[michael@michael ~]$ awk '{if (NR!=1 && NR!=2) {print $2, $3, $4}}' sometable.dat 
-0.926279001621519 -0.90179685027722 1.97957280153958
0.937524731204077 -1.23302316044355 -0.180671760736866
-1.44570215269122 0.817268060335293 0.311498702884293
-0.547354824616171 0.827169714956968 -0.462521312697732
-0.290613900109242 2.11331118379395 0.504731900370643
-1.50689928026228 -0.273155683881863 1.61629032009698
-0.154531591553615 0.201957539158184 -2.37144275790015
1.06123047151248 -0.527749699949128 0.32923487045257
1.05843977271672 0.510092464005052 -1.06093331871229
0.0961074300632977 -0.559597700246554 -0.510204378208016

sed (stream editor)

[michael@michael ~]$ cat sometable.dat 
"0.105774991546184","0.847064147883745","-0.0660739625900144"
"0.991642673113269","-0.910378353936528","0.242019735200752"
"1.18670738365435","-0.0635949990874165","0.0545035172895231"
"0.339030527116908","1.00409816349115","1.05409760045931"
"0.733140277297745","-0.486181059367985","-0.782856940083747"
"0.912168817424054","-0.665072486844399","0.305825741840168"
"0.760501919797442","0.631352260415459","-0.702661487210477"
"-1.78710953318012","0.691635475717654","-1.11995993079623"
"1.48652315899709","-0.248673688916947","0.131737972070439"
"0.903709893442578","0.0485020698381635","0.413212986364045"

sed (stream editor)

[michael@michael ~]$ sed -e 's/,/ /g' -e 's/"//g' sometable.dat 
0.105774991546184 0.847064147883745 -0.0660739625900144
0.991642673113269 -0.910378353936528 0.242019735200752
1.18670738365435 -0.0635949990874165 0.0545035172895231
0.339030527116908 1.00409816349115 1.05409760045931
0.733140277297745 -0.486181059367985 -0.782856940083747
0.912168817424054 -0.665072486844399 0.305825741840168
0.760501919797442 0.631352260415459 -0.702661487210477
-1.78710953318012 0.691635475717654 -1.11995993079623
1.48652315899709 -0.248673688916947 0.131737972070439
0.903709893442578 0.0485020698381635 0.413212986364045

rsync

• Often used to sync files between local and remote systems

[michael@michael ~]$ rsync -avzu office:.matlab/myfunctions/figs/ .
receiving incremental file list
./
1_a_0_neg.eps
1_a_0_pos.eps
1_a_10_neg.eps
1_a_10_pos.eps
 
sent 90 bytes  received 12464 bytes  2789.78 bytes/sec
total size is 36238  speedup is 2.89

SSH Keys

• Typing in your password everytime you scp or ssh is tiresome

  lindon@michael-laptop:~$ ssh-keygen
  Generating public/private rsa key pair.
  Enter file in which to save the key (/home/lindon/.ssh/id_rsa):  
  Created directory '/home/lindon/.ssh'.
  Enter passphrase (empty for no passphrase):
  Enter same passphrase again:
  Your identification has been saved in /home/lindon/.ssh/id_rsa.
  Your public key has been saved in /home/lindon/.ssh/id_rsa.pub.

• When prompted to enter a file, passphrase, same passphrase, simply press return
• The last line will then be succeeded by the key’s fingerprint and random image.

• The public and private key are found in (hidden) the /home/user/.ssh directory

A note on security

• A public and a private key is generated (don’t give the private one out)
• Most strongly advise having a strong passphrase so that if your private key is compromised you still have the passphrase
• However, instead of requiring a password to be entered, it now requires a passphrase to be entered, so nothing has been gained
• I don’t have a passphrase, because I get tired of typing it in every single painful time you push or pull something
• As long as you keep your private key PRIVATE, then I wouldn’t bother

Transfer the public key with ssh-copy-id

lindon@michael-laptop:~$ ssh-copy-id -i lindon@remotecomputer.com
The authenticity of host 'remotecomputer (xx.xxx.xxx.xx)' can't be established.
RSA key fingerprint is   :  :  :  :  :  :  :  :  :  :  :  :  :  :  :  :.
Are you sure you want to continue connecting (yes/no)? yes
Warning: Permanently added 'remotecomputer,xx.xxx.xxx.xx' (RSA) to the list of known hosts.
lindon@remotecomputer's password:
Now try logging into the machine, with "ssh 'lindon@remotecomputer.com'", and check in:

~/.ssh/authorized_keys

to make sure we haven't added extra keys that you weren't expecting.

lindon@michael-laptop:~$

• The -i option means that the default public key, i.e. ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub, is used.

Login without password

lindon@michael-laptop:~$ ssh lindon@remotecomputer.com
Welcome to Ubuntu 11.04 (GNU/Linux 2.6.38-11-generic x86_64)

* Documentation:  https://help.ubuntu.com/

Last login: Sun Sep 11 15:57:14 2011 from xx.xxx.xxx.xx
lindon@remotecomputer:~$

SSH Config

• Creating an alias saves a lot of time

  [michael@michael ~]$ cd .ssh
  [michael@michael .ssh]$ cat config
  Host saxon
  HostName saxon.stat.duke.edu
  User msl33
  [michael@michael .ssh]$ ssh saxon
  Last login: Sat Aug 29 19:16:35 2015 from foo.bar.foo.bar.com
  [msl33@saxon ~]$ 

SSH Keys with Gitub

• In the top right corner of any page, click your profile photo, then click Settings.
• In the user settings sidebar, click SSH keys.
• Click Add SSH key.
• In the Title field, add a descriptive label for the new key. For example, if you’re using a personal Mac, you might call this key “Personal MacBook Air”.
• Paste your key into the “Key” field.
• Paste your key into the “Key” field.
• Confirm the action by entering your GitHub password.

• Test

  ssh -T git@github.com

Switching from HTTP to SSH

• Most likely you’ve been pushing/pulling to your github repo over https
• SSH is nicer, and with keys will not require login each time
• To change this for your repository of interest you should switch the remote urls from ssh to http
• Instructions linked in title