Cu nesci arrinesci

 Cu nesci arrinesci

A rough translation could be: "Those who leave their own comfort zone succeed." 

A few weeks ago, I found myself working on something and my instinctive usage of vim caught my attention. It got me thinking about the tools I'm using. I started looking for "modern" equivalents to common unix tools. And then I replaced the old tools with the new. On the one hand, learning something new kills my productivity. And it forces me to learn. Here's what I changed:

• ls -> exa
• vim -> helix
• which -> fzf
• cat -> bat
• top -> btop
• git -> fossil
• grep -> ripgrep
• curl -> curlie
• sudo -> doas
• tmux -> zellij

It's been a challenge. The biggest change is to stop using the old commands. I ended up renaming the originals with -old. I then symlinked the old command to a shell script that puts out a simple "use the new command fool". The biggest change has been using helix. Helix is a great editor. It's somewhat similar to vim, but also very different. It's very good overall. The most common commands are fairly easy to learn and after a tough week, I'm as productive with it as I am with vim. I don't like the language server being NodeJS, but I also don't really need it. 

A year ago, I started learning Italian. Every time I've learned a foreign language, I've been in country. Full immersion is a great way to learn, especially when you're in country and literally everything requires you to speak the language.The classes are designed to be in Italian only, from the start. It's a tough way to learn a language a few hours a week, mostly because I'm not in country and not forced to use Italian every minute of every day. I live in an Italian neighborhood, so that helps some. It pushes me out of my comfort zone, which was part of my goal. Next up, a trip to Italy to test my language skills.

Overall, being uncomfortable by design forces one to grow. It's been a great experience.