It's proof enough that you'll figure it out.

Years of interviewing people for my own teams has shown me that understanding your tools (especially to the point of being opinionated about them) is probably the #1 indicator of success.

Indeed. Someone with the fortitude and discipline to get really good at their tools can probably pick up whatever you throw at them.

Its also a good sign that they might be into technology for its own sake, which also doesn't hurt.

Where I work we use a lot of jetbrains IDE's and I've been a massive fan of Intellij, I absolutely love it when I can show someone something that makes their life easier.

Whether it's how to implement an external program properly using all the expansions or how to use bookmarks (how people can use an IDE for years and not find that is a good question).

I've always RTFM of whatever tool I'm using as the first step then I go look at the default keybindings to see what else there is.

The one that blows people away though is the custom exporters you can write for data views, oh you want that result set in a PHP array for a test set, yeah Copy as PHP has you.

Intellij is absurdly powerful without writing custom plugins (which is my next step I guess).

... and Jetbrains IDEs support a plugin called IdeaVIM that provides pretty solid vi/vim emulation.

IdeaVim is the uncanny value of vim for me. It's so close to being actual vim, but every now and then it does something unexpected and it completely throws me off.

I recorded a macro to change shouldBe([true|false]) to shouldBe[True|False](). Pretty simple: qqf(ds(~$a()<esc>q

But the vim-surround plugin emulation doesn't work properly with macros, so it'd get stuck and instead of just doing n@@ , I'd have to do n@@( , i.e pass the seperator I used for the delete surround command.

It doesn't have fold toggling, so z[a|A] doesn't work. The undo behaves weird, you usually have to do it twice UNLESS you've not moved the cursor since doing the last edit.

The git integration isn't as good as vim-fugitive and I constantly find my self reaching for the mouse to do anything git related, whereas in vim I could do it all with the keyboard.

The plugin gets brought up all the time when people talk about the JetBrains tools and no one seems to mention the short comings.

Some people are satisfied with the modal editing paradigm of Vim that they don't need its advanced features.

(intellij sometimes has recurring problems with lost keyboard input under linux+gnome. IdeaVIM is one of the first plugins i disable, when that happens. and it often helps.)

What a great test, and it makes sense - a craftsman cares very much about their tools, an average tech will use the first thing that they're taught.

It's also what's so hard about hiring junior candidates and why so many companies shy away from it.

Truly junior hires don't really know the tools yet. You can't really afford to wait for the rare junior who does, so unfortunately it's not as useful a test in that situation.

That's why I think OP's "seasoned sysadmin" line is perfectly valid. The junior that knows their tools has already cleared the hardest hurdle for most companies. Everything else is trainable through mentorship, but tools usage requires experience.

Indeed, I always advise people who want to be developers to build some stuff to show, to separate yourself from everyone else, and make it easier for the hirer. That is another reason to do it, an IT degree doesn't mean you can write code, as you say the rest can be learnt.

An IT degree is not about writing code. Perhaps you are referring to CS.

You become used to the first tool you pickup, its ways become "natural", and hence you become opinionated.

I don't know about that, my first tool was vi, I have strong opinions about it :-). I use an all singing IDE (Appcode) now, its not perfect either but works for now.

(Funnily enough ctrl-[ is one of my most used shortcuts in vim. It’s a convenient alternative to escape if you map caps-lock to ctrl)

Even better: map held Caps to Ctrl and a tap of Caps to Esc

I map held Caps to Super (so I can switch windows and use other higher-than-application-level shortcuts without leaving the home row in dwm), but yes, definitely don't limit yourself to one use for your keyboard's most convenient key without a use. In X11 it's as easy as

    setxkbmap -option caps:super
    xcape -e 'Super_L=Escape'

(where setxkbmap is built into X, and xcape is a one-command install away). And IIUC you can do this with ~6 clicks in a third-party GUI like https://karabiner-elements.pqrs.org/docs/manual/configuratio... in macOS.

I really don't like chord like shortcuts, while ctrl and [ are positioned in a way you don't have to contort your hand it kind of requires you to move away from the hjkl row or stretch your pinkies. Consider mapping esc to jk (as a sequence) it works surprisingly well.

  inoremap jk <esc> 

and

  inoremap <esc> <nop>

so that you never use esc again

not having chord like shortcuts was one of the main reasons that led me to try vim over emacs in the beginning, so I kind of think they're "anti" vim.

I've been using ctrl-[ for years, but have been experimenting with jj. Now I'm not sure which one I like better!

I switched back to vim+tmux (nvim) a few weeks ago from a number of years using vs-code with the vim keybindings.

I'm still trying to configure my plugins so that I don't feel like I'm repeating myself too often.

Having ctrl-[ in your muscle memory has the advantage that it also works in other readline programs that have a vi like interfacee, e.g. bash, zsh and many db consoles.

I recommend mapping jk to esc in insert mode (instead of jj), so you remain on the same line if you accidentally use it in normal mode.

Note, don't do this if you're Dutch, words with 'jk', or rather 'ijk' in them are annoyingly common.

This is now my muscle memory escape key since an embarrassingly cheap Bluetooth keyboard of mine only allowed escape == home button on my Android devices.

Pro Tip: Park the flesh of your left palm near the left ctrl key and use that instead of your pinky for ctrl. I admit this feels a bit weird at first but avoids the need to lift your fingers from the home row. Super bonus: use ^H for backspace. Try it out!

Note: Often Ctrl-3 does the same thing.

That's excellent!

That gives a left handed option for escape without leaving the home row. I really like having mirrored shortcuts like that, thank you.

Omg that is such a game changer for me. way more ergonimic than hitting esc

You may be using vim wrong. Good for you if you like it that way

You're going to have to explain that one because I generally switch back to command mode after every edit so I use ctrl-[ a lot.

I'd be VERY interested to hear why that's wrong and what you do differently.

my reasoning was : you could have mapped caps lock to ESC but you did not. So maybe you are using CTRL too much (CTRL-V maybe?) which is not the best way to use vim.

No your reasoning is way off. I map to ctrl rather than escape because I want to make use of the Insert and Ex mode ctrl shortcuts.

For example, if I want to insert a register into the ex mode command line I use ctr-r <register>.

Or if I want to pop out of insert mode for a single command I use ctr-o.

E.g. inserting opening and closing tags when a suitable plugin isn't present. Insert the opening and closing tag, jump back to command mode with ctrl-o, move backwards and you're ready to insert more text.

Can't speak for everyone, but I use this[1] keyboard most of the time, and it doesn't have a Caps Lock key to remap, but instead has Control where Caps Lock normally is. So using ctrl-[ is much easier than reaching up to the escape key.

[1] https://hhkeyboard.us/pro-classic/

Using Ctrl-[ is perfectly fine if that's convenient to you. Some people doe "inoremap jj <esc>" and double tap j to exit insert mode. If it's faster for you than pressing regular escape, it's an improvement, and thus good.

Politely, I'd consider rephrasing this in the future. Not everyone springs forth into the world with a 5kloc .vimrc. Everyone is incrementally learning from someone else at their own pace.

I'll do. Thank you. I did not realise I was mean because english is not my native language

Yeah, I think you got lucky. He sounds like a great boss. And, he was probably right.

Such a thing is a proxy character trade and probably told him enough. I'm in bioinformatics, if an applicant tells me they studied biology but have always run a Linux server at home, I can also stop the interview: hired.

Heh, I would fall for that!