Ask HN: What work/office purchase transformed your life? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: What work/office purchase transformed your life?

#181

Post by jjice » Fri, Nov 17, 2023, 4:24 PM UTC

solardev wrote: post #67

OK, cheating a bit here, but: My Jetbrains IDEs. It's a huge productivity boost for me over VSCode, with batteries included out of the box (great diff engine, gitlens like visual git, built in postman like client, SQL query editor and table browser, amazing indexed searched, awesome refactoring). I've paid for an individual sub for a decade and will probably keep doing it for life. Really great product that's useful…

I only use DataGrip, but oh boy is that the best $8 a month that my employer pays for. I'd pay an absurd amount out of pocket per month for DG alone. Easily $100 probably.

I've used so many SQL GUIs and DataGrip is better than all of them in every way. From the top notch intellisense to the great GUI with safe and commitable changes, there's just so much that blows everyone else out of the water. I spent two years at one job settling for SequelPro, an old freeware MacOS SQL client. What the hell was wrong with me? For $8 a month, I could have felt much more comfortable and been more effective in my development.

Re: Ask HN: What work/office purchase transformed your life?

#182

Post by kasperlitheater » Fri, Nov 17, 2023, 4:36 PM UTC

ElevenLathe wrote: post #134

Arctis Nova Pro Wireless Headset. I can stay connected to both my workstation (with enough range to cover my house and some of the yard) and my phone at the same time. This allows me to wander/pace away from my desk during meetings, and also answer calls without taking it off. It's super comfy, and comes with two batteries so the base can charge one while the other is in use, meaning you never have to plug it in to c…

Second that. It's just amazing.

Re: Ask HN: What work/office purchase transformed your life?

#183

Post by dyingkneepad » Fri, Nov 17, 2023, 4:44 PM UTC

I painted my walls white (from shitty brown) and now I'm not depressive anymore.

I also bought a split ergonomic keyboard (Dygma Raise), and now I hate typing on every other keyboard.

Re: Ask HN: What work/office purchase transformed your life?

#184

Post by solardev » Fri, Nov 17, 2023, 5:10 PM UTC

tmaly wrote: post #177

solardev wrote: post #67

OK, cheating a bit here, but: My Jetbrains IDEs. It's a huge productivity boost for me over VSCode, with batteries included out of the box (great diff engine, gitlens like visual git, built in postman like client, SQL query editor and table browser, amazing indexed searched, awesome refactoring). I've paid for an individual sub for a decade and will probably keep doing it for life. Really great product that's useful…

I finally switched to using Jetbrains IDEs after using vim for so many decades. I am curious how you went about learning all the features. There just seems to be so many and it can be a bit overwhelming.

I'm sure I still don't know them all! I just learn them as I need to. Like "how to revert a commit Jetbrains" or "Jetbrains query postgres" or "copilot for Jetbrains", etc.

Really 95% of the time I'm just using the code editor, intellisense, and search everywhere (shift shift shift). I'm glad the other features are there but it's totally fine to slowly discover them.

I think by default it also launches with a tip of the day feature, which you can manually browse through to see many of the tricks.

Re: Ask HN: What work/office purchase transformed your life?

#185

Post by solardev » Fri, Nov 17, 2023, 5:11 PM UTC

charlie0 wrote: post #172

solardev wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, yeah, we had that issue too and solved it pretty successfully with `.editorconfig` (shareable between VScode and IntelliJ, https://editorconfig.org/ ) combined with `prettier`. Each IDE is configured to: - Not reformat code on its own - Ignore whitespace - Run `prettier` as a pre-commit hook Those settings are saved to `.editorconfig` where possible, or to each IDE's repo-specific folder (e.g. `.idea`). Then in t…

I've suggested that twice now, but it's a couple of the more senior members on the team being resistant, so the feet dragging continues.

Don't worry, one day soon you'll become the senior and pass along the torment with your favorite code styles :) And thus the cycle continues...

Re: Ask HN: What work/office purchase transformed your life?

#186

Post by jjice » Fri, Nov 17, 2023, 5:53 PM UTC

boringalterego wrote: post #63

Portable USB monitor for business trips. That second monitor when on the road does wonders.

They're very affordable now too. I got one for something like $80 and it's been great. Working remote and getting to visit friends and family during the week and still have more screen real estate is huge.

Re: Ask HN: What work/office purchase transformed your life?

#187

Post by kholdstayr » Fri, Nov 17, 2023, 5:58 PM UTC

jjice wrote: post #181

solardev wrote: post #67

OK, cheating a bit here, but: My Jetbrains IDEs. It's a huge productivity boost for me over VSCode, with batteries included out of the box (great diff engine, gitlens like visual git, built in postman like client, SQL query editor and table browser, amazing indexed searched, awesome refactoring). I've paid for an individual sub for a decade and will probably keep doing it for life. Really great product that's useful…

I only use DataGrip, but oh boy is that the best $8 a month that my employer pays for. I'd pay an absurd amount out of pocket per month for DG alone. Easily $100 probably. I've used so many SQL GUIs and DataGrip is better than all of them in every way. From the top notch intellisense to the great GUI with safe and commitable changes, there's just so much that blows everyone else out of the water. I spent two years at…

I wish I could use DataGrip. I work in health IT but the database is over 1 TB and literally has over 1 thousand tables. DataGrip basically crashes.

I refunded my purchase.

Re: Ask HN: What work/office purchase transformed your life?

#188

Post by charlie0 » Fri, Nov 17, 2023, 6:24 PM UTC

solardev wrote: post #185

charlie0 wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've suggested that twice now, but it's a couple of the more senior members on the team being resistant, so the feet dragging continues.

Don't worry, one day soon you'll become the senior and pass along the torment with your favorite code styles :) And thus the cycle continues...

I can't wait to mandate tabs over spaces, haha :D.

Re: Ask HN: What work/office purchase transformed your life?

#189

Post by sethammons » Fri, Nov 17, 2023, 6:28 PM UTC

I need a height adjustable desk that can go down to my lap and up to standing. Being able to go as low as my lap allows my feet to stay flat on the floor, my legs to have even pressure on my fancy herman miller aaron chair seat, and then have my arms comfortably at my side with my forearms level to the tabletoptype on my split mechanical keyboard. I also recently went to a vertical mouse. The computer stand needs to be tall enough that my eyes are generally looking straight, not up or down.

I also like a good mic and good webcam (currently using a dslr).

Also having a large thermos of water at arms length.

Re: Ask HN: What work/office purchase transformed your life?

#190

Post by sethammons » Fri, Nov 17, 2023, 6:30 PM UTC

FFP999 wrote: post #68

An ergonomic split keyboard. Suddenly I can type without rotating my shoulders inward. Which in turn means more room in my chest for my lungs to expand. The difference was not subtle. Learning to touch-type on this thing took a while but was totally worth it.

learning to touch type on the ergodox-ez was a barrier for me. I went from 70wpm to like 20. I'm sure it would have came back up after some time, but I just went with a Cloud9 Split Mechanical because it is _just_ like using the microsoft ergo 4000. I had no drop in typing speed adopting it; if anything, my speed immediately improved.