The Final Artefact

One of the key benefits of modern editors like NVim, Vim, or Emacs is the rich plugin ecosystem. After years with Vim, I switched to NVim and was immediately impressed by its plugin landscape. The Lazy plugin manager—available for NVim > 0.8—quickly became my favourite. Lazy simplifies plugin discovery and management. It offers an intuitive interface and powerful commands that make it easy to add, remove, or update plugins. Auto-Updating Plugins As I added more plugins, Lazy frequently prompted me to update them....

Setting up a robust data science development environment takes time, and it’s a process that’s rarely ever finished. If you’re the type who likes to get the most out of your tools, you’ll likely enjoy tweaking, optimising, and layering your workspace with productivity enhancements. That might mean refining your Python setup to easily manage multiple language versions and dependencies, or expanding your text editor with plugins for linting, code suggestions, unit test execution, and CI/CD integration....

What are .dotfiles? Dotfiles are hidden configuration files on Unix-like systems. Their filenames start with a dot (.), making them hidden by default. They store preferences and settings for programs like shells, text editors, and version control systems. Many modern Linux applications follow the XDG Base Directory Specification. This guideline recommends placing user-specific configuration files in ~/.config (or $XDG_CONFIG_HOME). Using this standard reduces clutter in home directories and simplifies managing configurations across systems....

Why Swift? Data science is dominated by Python and R, with some usage of Julia, Scala, Java, and C++. While Swift may not be the most popular choice, it offers several notable benefits—especially for developers already invested in the Apple ecosystem. Key Advantages Performance Considerations As a compiled language, Swift often runs faster than languages like Python or R. This can be especially beneficial when handling large datasets or complex computations....

Vim provides a wide range of functions for file formatting, starting with basic features such as reindent. VimL Implementation Creating a function within Vim to process the file is likely the most straightforward approach. The primary purpose of this function is to pass the filename to an external command for formatting. Leveraging the rich ecosystem of Python formatting tools available from the command line allows the function to efficiently and consistently format files, tapping into powerful, pre-existing solutions for code aesthetics and standardization....