NameMangler (OS X) - renames files in all sorts of ways!
Ask HN: Programs that saved you 100 hours? (2022 edition)
171–180 of 574 posts
Re: Ask HN: Programs that saved you 100 hours? (2022 edition)
#172JetBrains software.
XDebug in PHPStorm. Can't live without it!
Re: Ask HN: Programs that saved you 100 hours? (2022 edition)
#173GitHub Copilot As a manager & parent with only occasional bursts of time to code (some work, mostly side/fun stuff), Copilot has turned out to be incredibly useful in smoothing over all of the small things I'm slow at because I don't do them daily. And especially since I have limited time, I just want to get the damn thing working and am quite happy to my way there as quickly as possible.
I'm in a similar position -- I only code because I enjoy it, but I also just don't have the time to actually finish the coding projects that I'd like to. Plus, I'm a pretty bad coder because I only have a few hours every couple of weeks to focus on it, outside of the occasional bigger project. I'm going to look into Copilot to see if it can help me actually do what I want.
Re: Ask HN: Programs that saved you 100 hours? (2022 edition)
#174Microsoft Excel. Manipulating tens or hundreds of thousands of rows, including cross-referencing across tables, is just so satisfying and much faster than doing it with a DB or code. Alternative spreadsheet software do some things better, but they don't come close as a complete package, I don't regret paying for it myself for the first time in my life. It such a life saver in a pinch. Obligatory Spolsky intro to Exce…
As a Linux user, using Excel via the web interface or via a virtual machine is not so satisfying nor much faster than alternatives.
Yeah, as someone who doesn't pay for MS, I'm basically using a combination of Calc and Gnumeric, because G can open larger files (handled larger files than Excel in fact), but Calc has more features, and it's more similar to Excel which I was used to. ONLYOFFICE's sheets can also be handy, if MS Excel compatibility is wanted.
Re: Ask HN: Programs that saved you 100 hours? (2022 edition)
#175I've easily saved 100 hours already using ChatGPT. If you haven't heard of it already, this is, in my personal opinion, superhuman general AI with almost no limitations except that it might not be free forever and it likes to stay SFW. For example, if you ask it to list "What pieces of software that most users don't use is most likely to save me 100 hours - keep your answer brief and specific" you get the response at…
I don’t know how useful this reply is. Essentially everything it suggested is not “software that most users don’t use” (which is what was requested). It just a list of really common software, with lots of fluff text. If you knew nothing about software, this list could be helpful, but otherwise this reply is not good.
That being said, I find ChatGPT really useful for generating basic code samples. It can replace basic uses of Google and Stack overflow.
Re: Ask HN: Programs that saved you 100 hours? (2022 edition)
#176I used Dynobase for roughing out a DynamoDB project this year. It's the best and only real GUI for DynamoDB at this point. Many, many hours saved.
Re: Ask HN: Programs that saved you 100 hours? (2022 edition)
#177LSP. The Language Server Protocol. Entirely changed my life for the better this year, once I took the time to get it integrated into Emacs and get the various backends I needed installed. Easily has saved me hundreds of hours so far, being able to view function prototypes quickly, pull up documentation as an overlay on the code, jumping to the next error, and even down to getting simple things like enumerated 'case'…
What language(s) do you do most of your work in?
Re: Ask HN: Programs that saved you 100 hours? (2022 edition)
#178Seeing a lot of “fiddly” software being listed here. Stuff that lets you configure and tune a workflow endlessly. It’s ironic that this is the sort of thing most of us will think of, since it doesn’t really account for time saved so much as time spent fiddling… Keeping an eye out for software that you barely use, as this is the kind with the most potential to truly save me time.
From that perspective, using Ctrl+R and Ctrl+S for reverse-i-search in a shell saves me so much time from writing commands especially big Kubernetes ones.
You can also add a comment for searchability, as in:
> big hairy command with --lots --of arguments # foobar
Re: Ask HN: Programs that saved you 100 hours? (2022 edition)
#179Home Assistant [0] through bunch of automations we have around our home must’ve saved 100h in total for me and my partner so far. [0] - https://www.home-assistant.io/
I hook tons of stuff up to HA and I love it. It's great with Sonoff switches flashed with Tasmota.
I've moved on my Sonoffs from Tasmota to ESPurna and finally to ESPhome which I find excellent.
Re: Ask HN: Programs that saved you 100 hours? (2022 edition)
#180Microsoft Excel. Manipulating tens or hundreds of thousands of rows, including cross-referencing across tables, is just so satisfying and much faster than doing it with a DB or code. Alternative spreadsheet software do some things better, but they don't come close as a complete package, I don't regret paying for it myself for the first time in my life. It such a life saver in a pinch. Obligatory Spolsky intro to Exce…
100% in agreement on Excel. Even when coding in Python I frequently save an intermediate file as xlsx to explore/debug, or even load into Tableau for viz.
You should learn R and dplyr ;)