Ask HN: Programs that saved you 100 hours? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: Programs that saved you 100 hours?

#191

Post by mikorym » Mon, Apr 13, 2020, 6:53 AM UTC

I wrote a couple of VBA scripts for Excel that has probably saved my team 100 hours.

Prior to that, we would have templates being opened and copied over. As much as developers often don't like Excel, the problem that Excel has always directly addressed still exists: Not everyone wants to program.

Re: Ask HN: Programs that saved you 100 hours?

#192

Post by hackerbeat » Mon, Apr 13, 2020, 6:55 AM UTC

Chrome plugin "News Feed Eradicator for Facebook" - haven't seen my news feed in years and just use FB for messaging.

Re: Ask HN: Programs that saved you 100 hours?

#193

Post by will_lam » Mon, Apr 13, 2020, 6:56 AM UTC

RescueTime. Hands down. Have been a proud customer for 4 years. Saved me months of my life being frittered away. Except right now.. I guess :)

Re: Ask HN: Programs that saved you 100 hours?

#194

Post by xerosanyam » Mon, Apr 13, 2020, 6:56 AM UTC

Apart from vscode & copyclip

I find Remfo very useful: https://rememberforever.web.app/

It helps me take notes & memorize things. It is currently in beta but still very stable

Re: Ask HN: Programs that saved you 100 hours?

#195

Post by athrowaway3z » Mon, Apr 13, 2020, 6:57 AM UTC

opwieurposiu wrote: post #64

VSCode, and/or Sublime Text have probably saved me a hundred hours I would have spent waiting for Eclipse to start.

I finally switched from VSCode/Sublime to Spacemacs about a year ago ( It was my 3rd try switching ).

I'm sure this saved me an additional hundred hours.

Re: Ask HN: Programs that saved you 100 hours?

#196

Post by sweeetland » Mon, Apr 13, 2020, 6:57 AM UTC

Not a program as such but learning to touch type

zsh & ohmyzsh plugins

Clipboard manager - built my own because I wasn't happy with the ones I had tried... https://nellyapp.com

Re: Ask HN: Programs that saved you 100 hours?

#197

Post by will_lam » Mon, Apr 13, 2020, 6:58 AM UTC

Also, SizeUp. Let's you customize your desktop windows to fullscreen, half screen etc with hot keys. http://www.irradiatedsoftware.com/sizeup/

Re: Ask HN: Programs that saved you 100 hours?

#198

Post by greggman3 » Mon, Apr 13, 2020, 6:59 AM UTC

jkhaui wrote: post #92

dorkwood wrote: post #62

Everything[0] by Voidtools as a Windows search replacement. It makes search practically instant. Now that Windows search often fails to turn up even my most used files (what happened to Windows search? Was it intentionally nerfed?), Everything has become a necessity for me. [0]: https://www.voidtools.com/

Wow, thanks for sharing this. Also, to second your question: what the hell did happen to Windows search? I always just assumed I'd done something to break it (and honestly, could never be bothered trying to "fix" it... even after all these years), but apparently it's inherently broken. I know very little about OS software. Could someone explain at a high-level how something as fundamental as file search can be render…

I don't use windows search but, at least in the past, it took plugins to allow it to read through any format for which a plugin is registered. Of course MS included plugins for office files. Plugins for PDFs, zip files, etc. It's been around since the mid 90s. Sad if it's not working well.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/search/-searc...

Re: Ask HN: Programs that saved you 100 hours?

#199

Post by jakear » Mon, Apr 13, 2020, 6:59 AM UTC

greggman3 wrote: post #184

fbnlsr wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe Settings Sync is going to be included in the next release of VS Code. Yay! The amount of work Microsoft is putting in this editor is amazing. Last month we got file history, that was the last thing I needed to ditch the Git GUI I had installed.

I use vscode but it's missing some basic code features for me. The biggest for me is probably keyboard macros, something that's been a basic feature of editors since at least the 80s. Keyboard macros in other editors has saved me 100s of hours. https://github.com/microsoft/vscode/issues/4490

Curious, what do you think of multi-cursor as a replacement for macros?

(I’m on the team)

Re: Ask HN: Programs that saved you 100 hours?

#200

Post by mszcz » Mon, Apr 13, 2020, 7:01 AM UTC

AltDrag for Windows. Allows you to move and resize windows by pressing alt and left/right mouse button and drag anywhere on the window, not just title bar.

GridMove to arrange windows (with multiple monitor support) by keyboard shortcuts according to a grid I specified.

AutoHotKeys script that replaces 'dddd' with current date, 'ddtt' with date and time, 'dtdt' that outputs date and time with underscores (think filenames) and 'tttt' for just time.