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Ask HN: What technologies greatly improve the efficiency of development?

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Re: Ask HN: What technologies greatly improve the efficiency of development?

#21

Post by softwaredoug »

After using copilot - that’s not it (yet).

The most useful completions would also be done by an IDE. Especially in statically typed languages.

The borderline useful of the completions, you spend a lot of energy scanning a seemingly ingenious solution for bugs. And usually there’s enough one or two deceptively silly bugs that I wish I had just written the code.

The rest are silly and entertaining completions. Honestly the LOLz from these completions are the reason I still use copilot.

Re: Ask HN: What technologies greatly improve the efficiency of development?

#24

Post by mxuribe »

tiffanyh wrote: post #20

PHP For all the hate PHP gets, a massive positive of it is entire classes of development friction that just doesn’t exist for it. COMPILE: Slow compile times, nope - it’s interrupted & you can run the code instantly. DEVELOPMENT: Confusing and complex development tooling or middleware, nope - just SFTP a single file to your webroot. So the language / environment you pick to develop in can has massive impact on produc…

100% THIS! There is a reason so many products and platforms - like WordPress, which powers so many blogs on the internet - were built leveraging PHP: productivity/getting stuff done! I would add that i'm not only implying that conventional developers gain productivity...but that also that PHP empowered - yes empowered - folks who may not be "real" developers, and gave them a tool/platform to participate on the production (not only consumer) side of the greater web.

Re: Ask HN: What technologies greatly improve the efficiency of development?

#27

Post by a-dub »

juancampa wrote: post #16

Anything that reduces the code -> build -> test cycle: Automatic test runners, Hot-reloading, Incremental compilers, Static typing, Build farms (when working with massive code bases), Compiler caching: ccache, sccache

ding!

Re: Ask HN: What technologies greatly improve the efficiency of development?

#28

Post by sokoloff »

REPL* and paredit for Lisp/clojure code.

It's hard to describe in a way that sounds compelling, but once you've experienced it, it's profoundly faster and (therefore?) more joyous than any other dev experience I've had.

* Cider / SLIME for me.

Re: Ask HN: What technologies greatly improve the efficiency of development?

#29

Post by aitoehigie »

codeptualize wrote: post #2

I think automatic code formatters have huge impact. Not just to save time on manually formatting code, they also flag syntax errors; if it doesn’t format on save you know something is wrong. In team context they take away all bike shedding about formatting. Code reviews can focus more on stuff that matters, not just silly formatting tweaks. To me a good formatter is as essential as autocomplete.

This is one of the reasons why any project I work with, I always include pre-commit (pre-commit.com).

Re: Ask HN: What technologies greatly improve the efficiency of development?

#30

Post by alexchamberlain »

egman_ekki wrote: post #12

- Automated testing running on each PR - Having a dedicated Quality team - Ensuring everyone is on the same page, from the lowest level (coding standards) to mid level (discussing tasks before implementing them) to meta level (principles for development, building culture) - Rewarding bold moves and experiments, giving people freedom to be creative - Leveraging the wisdom of the Open Source community

The 2nd and 3rd points seem somewhat at odds? How do you balance team discussion with encouraging individuals to experiment and push the boat forward?
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