Goal: create an insanely simple “did” file accessible by terminal

Time flies by when you’re learning how to code. Its super important to take a second every once in a while to simple write down what you did during the past mental sprint. Writing down what you learned solidifies the knowledge.

Cue the did.txt file

This file is simply an ongoing timestamped list of what you’ve done. There are many other options, “Notes” on Mac, OneNote but since we do not want to lose the flow of coding, we need this in the terminal

Version 1. A simple txt file

Type in command into your terminal and simply type out what you did.

$ vim ~/did.txt

example did.txt file

Version 2. A simple txt file with time stamps

vim on your command line allows options and this includes running “ex commands”. Here we run the r read command and read the date command into the file as a timestamp at the top of the file.

$ vim +'r!date' ~/did.txt

Version 3. A simple txt file with natural time stamps

Its likely more natural for you to type at the bottom of the file so with normal Go we move the cursor to the bottom before reading from the date command.

$ vim +'normal Go' +'r!date' ~/did2.txt

example did.txt file

Final Version. An alias to open did.txt

Final Step: Create your alias and add this to your .bash_profile .

alias did="vim +'normal Go' +'r!date' ~/did.txt"

Congrats!

Now running $ did in your terminal will bring you to your very own did file!

example did.txt file

Update: check out this blog post from marmalab super nice extra features.

For more about vim