I wrote a Vim plugin to replace Notational Velocity.
I’m actually really surprised at how much attention it’s gotten. Within a week, it’s gotten 50 stars, which is about 50 times more than I expected.
Some of my favorite Vin plugin developers have starred it and maybe even use it.
But the best moment, by far, was in a Reddit thread where a guy said
“I’ve got to try out notational-fzf-vim” in a sort of world-weary
tone, as if my plugin was an established thing that you just use
sometimes. Something boring. You know, something legit.
A guy told me that he thinks people starting out really need this sort of small win. Things like this let you realize that you can build things that other people use and find useful, and from there you can go on to bigger and better things. This only took about an hour to write, and 56 people liked it enough to star it. That’s a pretty nice thought.
So go out and write something. It’s surprising how lots of trivial little things are never implemented, even though the world would really benefit from them existing.
To paraphrase my friend Rohan quoting someone else:
I think the fear a lot of people have with building things is that they are going to build something and it’s not going to be impressive.
They are scared that they will find that they aren’t as great as they think they are.
But that’s okay since nobody really puts stuff out there.
Something someone said to me earlier which is true: “Take it a step at a time. You’ll be fine 😊”