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Ask HN: What tools do you recommend for working on Windows?

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Re: Ask HN: What tools do you recommend for working on Windows?

#11

Post by a3n »

Counter-suggestion:

Dive totally into the Windows world.

My background was star-nix, and when i found myself having to use Windows, I always did something like Cygwin, gvim, etc. Which worked fine.

But it necessarily limited my expertise in Windows. Being an expert in Windows, while working in a Windows environment, should make you a more valuable player.

When someone asks you how you do something, you don't want their eyes to glaze over when you say "First you have to install Cygwin." You make yourself a useless resource in their opinion.

Everything that can be done as a user in *nix can be done in Windows, in some Windows way. Be useful to yourself and your colleagues.

I think.

Re: Ask HN: What tools do you recommend for working on Windows?

#12

Post by solardev »

cartesius13 wrote: post #9
solardev wrote: post #7

What exactly are you trying to script and manipulate on company computers? (i.e. are you just playing around or trying to write your own programs, or is there some business process you're trying to automate?) Assuming you're just playing around and not trying to build something for business/professional use: Can you access Powershell at all (the new-ish and improved Windows terminal)? You can write scripts in it. If…

Everyone does thing is stupidly inefficient ways. For example, we need technical drawings of parts, the only way is through a web interface that fetches from some remote server and you can only do one at a time. So you will often see people copy pasting (or even typing if they're reading from paper) each item code one by one and printing one by one. Another common thing, we use SAP for most things but Excel is requir…

I'd look into writing and running your own browser extension for any of the web-based stuff. Javascript is more expressive (I believe) than AHK scripts and can easily manipulate the DOM/HTML to extract and parse data, fill in fields, or even do additional remote logins and fetches -- all without anything your admin has to install.

I don't know if your SAP is a desktop app or a website, but if it's a website, you can probably transform its output (or its AJAX calls) into some other format. Not too sure how you'd get it into and out of Excel after that (maybe via API if there is one, or you can generate a VBscript and use AHK to run it in Excel?)

Re: Ask HN: What tools do you recommend for working on Windows?

#13

Post by defrost »

sysinternals suite

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/sys...

A collection of tools that started outside Microsoft and are now very much embraced. Process Monitor does just that, AutoStart shows all the cruft that attaches at startup, to menus, to browsers, etc. FileMonitor .. live and logged file activity, etc.

One for your windows machine at home: PortMaster - it's an "easy use" tiered (free -> paid VPN like additions) variation in the sysInternals TCPView family - monitoring all network connections, tying them back to a process and making accept|deny trivial.

PortMaster requires installion - sysInternals mostly don't, but do report better with admin privileges.

BulkRenameTool is crazy effective if ever you need to organise file names, in a directory, multiple directories, entire subtrees, with or without regular expressions, can add | remove patterns | timestamps, etc. https://www.bulkrenameutility.co.uk/

https://ss64.com/nt/ :: An A-Z Index of Windows CMD commands.

https://ss64.com/ps/ :: An A-Z Index of Windows PowerShell commands

ROBOCOPY:: https://ss64.com/nt/robocopy.html - Windows native Robust File and Folder Copy, in a windows production pipeline this is the tool that can be autostarted to monitor folders and move | copy | backup data | scripts .. useful to move staged data evolution from one machine|location to another.

Re: Ask HN: What tools do you recommend for working on Windows?

#14

Post by 1oooqooq »

Leftium wrote: post #5

I use Git bash for Windows. It brings a lot of the linux shell tools/scripting experience to Windows. There is a portable "thumbdrive edition."[1] Look for the portable versions of other apps. PowerShell[2] is the built-in scripting language for Windows (better than BATCH scripts). I pop into gVim for quick text manipulation tasks. https://sumatrapdfreader.org is the best PDF reader. I recommend a launcher like https…

Do Not Use Git Bash.

install proper MSys2 or suffer later.

git bash is distribution of msys2, so to say, with very nad choices so to save money on not hosting a full package repo mirror. just go with msys2 install and don't suffer when you need something as basic as make.

but overall, sorry for you having to work on windows.

Re: Ask HN: What tools do you recommend for working on Windows?

#15

Post by defrost »

cartesius13 wrote: post #9
solardev wrote: post #7

What exactly are you trying to script and manipulate on company computers? (i.e. are you just playing around or trying to write your own programs, or is there some business process you're trying to automate?) Assuming you're just playing around and not trying to build something for business/professional use: Can you access Powershell at all (the new-ish and improved Windows terminal)? You can write scripts in it. If…

Everyone does thing is stupidly inefficient ways. For example, we need technical drawings of parts, the only way is through a web interface that fetches from some remote server and you can only do one at a time. So you will often see people copy pasting (or even typing if they're reading from paper) each item code one by one and printing one by one. Another common thing, we use SAP for most things but Excel is requir…

Assuming credentials there are many ways to browse | fetch files from remote servers that aren't web based - if you can work out a command line that accesses the remote server and logs in then file access in a batch fill or powershell script can follow.

Something in HN: CLI tools for CSV, etc. might click for you: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16784850

Re: Ask HN: What tools do you recommend for working on Windows?

#16

Post by sandreas »

I personally use the following:

- MSys2 - unix tools for windows

- wsl - Windows subsystem for linux

- Powershell + Powershell ISE - windows shell + dev tool

- starship - prompt config that also works on Powershell

- scoop - package manager (similar to apt and others) installs to your user directory

- The ultimate windows utility - debloat and installer https://christitus.com/windows-tool/

- my dotfiles

I still prefer POSIX stuff, but this way it is acceptable, especially scoop package manager is the most useful tool to save time installing software without admin permissions.

Re: Ask HN: What tools do you recommend for working on Windows?

#17

Post by xnorswap »

Some recommendations:

Shell: Powershell. It takes some getting used to dealing with objects rather than the "everything is a file/string" world of unix/linux but once you adjust to that, it's wonderful.

Toy programming/scripting: Linqpad. Quickly script tools in C#/.Net.

p.s. On file installation, try winget, or possibly chocolatey. Install via command line, and many of the programs support being installed without admin privileges by installing to the user profile.

Also don't be scared to ask your boss / IT department to install things for you. It's their job to provide you the tools you need.

I'd warn against trying to "hold on" to linux by trying to run everything through emulators or WSL2, it'll just add friction when you want to collaborate with colleagues.

Re: Ask HN: What tools do you recommend for working on Windows?

#18

Post by wruza »

Msys2 (mandatory), ahk, rapid environment editor, notepad2, winaero tweaker (bigger fonts, disabling nonsense).

Not sure about "install", but I think all of them can be just copied to your Documents/MyApps folder and run from there and/or associated in explorer.

I also write all my cli tools in typescript. It’s just a matter of copying a project from my template and running yarn link. Now it’s available in PATH as , links directly to project folder (no need to “reinstall” on changes).

Learn how to add menu items in explorer https://stackoverflow.com/questions/20449316/how-add-context...

In msys usr/bin, copy at least the following: echo, find, grep, mkdir, sort, bash - into `x${name}`, so you can run xfind, xbash, etc to not clash with windows builtins. You’ll cp more tools later, but these are immediately necessary.

Use a cmd-prolog for bash scripts:

  script.cmd:

  :
Powertoys FancyZones work better for me than any K/G/tiling wms.

For Excel, I used `npm i winax` (COM automation) at my last job. You may find it useful for advanced scripting.

Re: Ask HN: What tools do you recommend for working on Windows?

#19

Post by wruza »

thecrumb wrote: post #2

Conemu is a good terminal. VSCode is editor of choice. Find and Run Robot for rofi/dmenu replacement. Too bad you can't install WSL...

IME, both conemu and cmder were very slow last time I tried them again. Windows Terminal crashes once a day. Windows 10 builtin terminal is actually decent if you tweak the fonts and other defaults.
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