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Ask HN: Programs that saved you 100 hours?

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221–230 of 531 posts

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

#221

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/

Everything only searching file names might seem like a dealbreaker to some people but it actually provides a great incentive to give your files useful descriptive names.

I got Everything in a hotkey so it also doubles as an application launcher. It really is quite elegant.

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

#222
post #20
post #3

BeyondCompare (cited in the original thread), especially the folder comparison feature. Saved my sanity when our team's shared directory stopped syncing silently on my laptop and I had to figure out which files I needed to sync manually. WizTree ( https://antibody-software.com/web/software/software/wiztree-... ) is a freeware Windows utility (man, typing this took me back to 1997) that lets you quickly see which file…

Meld [0] (written with GTK so available on Windows, Linux, and possibly Mac but I don't know about that last one) is another tool in the first category. WinDirStat [1] (Windows) for the second. It is also available in the super-useful PortableApps format [2], which is always nice. [0]: https://meldmerge.org/ [1]: https://windirstat.net/ [2]: https://portableapps.com/apps

WinDirStat is extremely slow compared to WizTree, give WizTree a try :)

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

#223
A lot of these are not so much about saving 100 hours, rather being faster when it does matter, as well as doing something interesting (automating a task by writing a script) instead of doing the same thing over and over again. This is also why you shouldn't take https://xkcd.com/1205/ too literally, although it's good to keep in mind.

* frequent (automatic) backups (saves time and mood when things go wrong)

* i3

* fd (alternative to find)

* ripgrep

* keynav (don't use your mouse)

* !bangs on duckduckgo

* calcurse (terminal calendar)

* readline: C-h C-b C-a C-k M-b M-f C-u etc.

* howdoi (get SO answers in the terminal), especially useful for things you somewhat know but just forgot the syntax of.

* youtube-dl as already mentioned somewhere: you get out of youtube ASAP to prevent their algorithms from tricking into staying there. I also use it to watch videos later when I don't have internet, using a syncthing folder on my mobile which only syncs up to 10% remaining space (so that it doesn't fill with 100s of videos, just a few, enough for some trip). Videos are also rather inefficient in terms of communicating ideas, so better to keep them for when I really don't have better to do.

* in the same vein, adapt the speed of (technical) videos you watch, to skip the fluff and focus (even rewind) the difficult parts. Skip all ads, everywhere.

* uBlock Origin, for the same kind of reason: just block any annoying, time-consuming parts of website. If I need to go on some website regularly, and they happen to have a news section I don't care about (like their twitter feed), I just block it to get it out of my way.

* even use a text-only browser (I currently use w3m, which could show images in theory) for things like HN. HN itself works well, and its good links as well. You just trim a lot of the fluff, ads, etc.

* an easy way to sync files between your mobile and your computer (I use a combination of "Notes to Self" in Signal with an auto-destruct of 1 week for temporary stuff so that I don't have to delete it manually, and syncthing for longer-term things)

* script your way out of any repetitive task: if you need to register periodically to something, either use their API if they have one, or use selenium to automate it. I was really surprised how little time it took me to write my own script and learn how to use selenium.

* in general, rely less on proprietary software: it has the potential to break ("introduce new and shiny features and somehow make some old ones disappear" or just change the pricing-model) more regularly, and you'll have to switch which can be a burden. If some free (libre) software breaks hard for a lot of people, chances are that a fork will happen and the transition will be easier. This also applies to SaaS.

* try to avoid desktop apps: they don't compose well, you cannot easily script them compared to a CLI. It's also better than having a full remote desktop when you resort to SSH (especially on bad connections).

* try to learn the default keyboard shortcuts of software you use, unless they're really crazy: less config (which you'd have to sync and maintain), easier to use a computer which is not yours if need be

* regularly check that the commands you write in your terminal are not too verbose (use aliases / functions): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22853646

* check what's possible with frameworks like https://github.com/sorin-ionescu/prezto

* some dotfile repository to get you started in 5min on new computers with the same setup you're accustomed to.

* mutt (mostly to easily write emails in vim and grep emails from the terminal)

* cronjobs and reminders (I get new music albums on my phone regularly from my music library, so that I don't have to choose them manually (it's my library so I know I like them anyway). I used to actually spend time choosing music from my own library.)

* typing from your phone is inefficient, avoid it if possible. Batch your (non-time-critical) messaging. Most modern messaging apps have a desktop version these days.

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

#224

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

Couldn't agree more.. People who say Electron (on which VSCode is running) is bloated and is slow probably haven't worked on full fledged IDEs using Java.. they consume memory in Gigabytes, are slower, at least appear to be slower, despite using native UI and takes a lot longer to open.

How often do you open your IDE though?

I switched form VSCode to PHPStorm half a year ago, and while it feels a bit slower, the improvements are so unbelievable worth it for me. It does have a taste for memory, but then again, it easily saves me a lot of time each month, so just throwing RAM at it was a no-brainer for me.

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

#225

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/

I love that program, but must warn though, that I think there were few cases, when it affected file I/O.

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

#226
bash/shell knowledge helped me automate a lot of stuff with the 80/20 approach. I can't stress enough how often a simple 10 lines bash script automated hours of manual work for me.

Also, `vim -` (stdin buffer edit mode) is absurdly awesome. It starts with `ls -la | vim -` and ends up with `cat * | sed ... | vim -` and saves a ton of time.

These bashrc aliases rescued my stupidness a lot of times:

> alias cls="clear; printf '\033[3J'"; # clear screen and scroll buffer

> alias cp="cp -i"; # confirm before overwrite

> alias df="df -h"; # human-readable sizes

> alias mv="mv -i"; # confirm before overwrite

> alias ns="netstat -tup --wide"; # show active program sockets

If I would have to choose, it's definitely VIM that automated the most. Switched to VIM around 2004 and didn't regret it eversince.

Remotely debugging on an ssh server to figure out what's going on - with the same editor configuration and setup as on your desktop computer - comes in very handy in emergency situations when you have almost no tolerance for mistakes.

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

#227
post #136

Google Search Operators: https://ahrefs.com/blog/google-advanced-search-operators/

There was a time when this worked great. Now I feel like many doesn't work on Google

How so?

Sure, it’s true some of the operators come and go, but I assure you some of the most important ones still work fine and Google one a daily base asks me if I am a bot.

Happy to answer any questions if there’s something specific you’re having an issue with.

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

#228
post #202

Using vim as my main editor has incredibly increased my productivity, but learning to use it's macros saved me even a more tremendous amount of time. It takes a while to learn to use it, but after that any kind of repetitive task can be done easily with it. And if combined with some bash and vimscript knowledge, it is even greater.

I love vim and have been using it for years. However, I really struggle to find a good config for writing typescript. I see my VSCode colleagues having a blast with auto completion and type signatures lookups. But I could never get this right in vim. Is there a resource about state of the art typescript with vim?

Typescript works well using vim-polyglot. For the autocomplete I don't actually use it, but the last time I tried, coc.vim was nice (it is actually the VSCode completion engine in vim).

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

#229

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/

Does anyone know of a good Mac version of this?

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

#230

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/

I can confirm this too, I have not used Windows Search in years, it started getting slow in Windows 7, now in Windows 10 its practically unusable, you search for a file and it starts doing a web search.
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