Blogs

DATE: Monday, Nov 24, 2008
TIME: 8:00pm PDT (Tuesday 4:00am GMT)

WEBINAR
Installing OpenBSD 4.4

PRESENTER
Jacek Artymiak

Please join us for a live training webinar.

OpenBSD is often though of as a system that is difficult to install and learn. Powerful, but not friendly. Nothing could be further from the truth! Join us for the first in the series of live training webinars that show how easy it is to make your network more secure with OpenBSD 4.4.

November 15, 2008

vi(1) Tips--New from devGuide.net: Essential vi/vim Editor Skills, First Edition

Advertising is the rattling of a stick inside a swill bucket.
George Orwell

I got a question about Google ads in videos displayed when you're watching our videos. They are there, because we get free hosting from all those video sharing sites. We generally don't put Google ads on our sites, but in this case things are mostly beyond our control and we accept it as a fair deal in exchange for free video hosting. We are looking into other options, but this is what we have for now.

I'm not a clairvoyant, but I did win bets on Python and Ruby becoming very important when they were still little known outside the small circles of programmers. So, today I'm going to pronounce Erlang as the next big thing. If you are looking for a new niche for yourself, then Erlang is definitely the language to learn. It is the tool that the next generation of the Internet will be built with and it badly needs libraries and frameworks. If you join the fun now, you can still become one of the pillars of the Erlang community and reap the rewards. Which is quite important in this difficult financial climate.

I received a lot of great feedback on my vi(1) Tips book from the early readers. They agree that it is a great book for beginners. I am really happy to read such comments, because I wrote this book with beginners in mind. And I mean real beginners, who know how to use a computer, know what a command-line is, but the rest is a bit of a mystery to them.

Some of you might be wondering why have I chosen such an old topic for a book? I had to write it, because I found out that a lot of students who attend my OpenBSD training courses do not know vi(1). Which is fine if you are managing Apple Mac OS X or Microsoft Windows, but when you are being asked to set up an OpenBSD VPN, not knowing vi(1) is going to be a big problem.

So, instead of doing the same short crash vi(1) course over and over again at the beginning of each of my OpenBSD courses, I decided to write a book, create an on-line training course and other training resources to help my students get up to speed with vi(1). Now they have no excuse...