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Ask HN: Programs that saved you 100 hours?

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

#271

Post by macobo »

https://fishshell.com/ for sure

Just having sensible defaults on a shell works wonders on my day-to-day productivity.

Add a couple of aliases for productivity and off you go.

  abbr --add s "git status"
  abbr --add gap "git add --patch"
  abbr --add gco "git checkout"
  abbr --add gd "git diff"

  alias recent="git for-each-ref --sort=-committerdate refs/heads/ --format='%(color:yellow)%(refname:short)|%(color:bold green)%(committerdate:relative)|%(color:blue)%(subject)%(color:reset)' | column -ts'|' | tac"
  alias r="recent"

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

#272

Post by RMPR »

TAForObvReasons wrote: post #27
firloop wrote: post #22

Here's a couple (albeit macOS focused) favorites of mine: - Deliveries: macOS / iOS package tracking https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/deliveries-a-package-tracker... - Screenotate: OCR all of your screenshots with metadata like program/webpage https://screenotate.com - The Tagger: lightweight macOS utility to tag music / fetch metadata from discogs https://deadbeatsw.com/thetagger/ - youtube-dl: Download any video / s…

PS: youtube-dl is not macos-specific, there is a windows build and many linux distros like ubuntu have packages

Apart from Arch, Fedora and [insert your fast-paced distro here] I wouldn't recommend to use the package manager's version of youtube-dl, because it's almost always too old.

Quoting the bug section of the Readme[1]

> Note that Ubuntu packages do not seem to get updated anymore. Since we are not affiliated with Ubuntu, there is little we can do. Feel free to report bugs to the Ubuntu packaging people - all they have to do is update the package to a somewhat recent version. See above for a way to update.

[1]: https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/blob/master/README.md...

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

#274

Post by RMPR »

lars512 wrote: post #208
Seb-C wrote: 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 have to agree wholeheartedly. Learning vim is quite painful, but it keeps paying off for years, even if you choose to use modern editors with vim bindings. The speed of these bindings for navigating and editing code is really unrivalled. I even use the Vimium Chrome plugin, it's a pleasure there too.

> I even use the Vimium Chrome plugin

This plugin can be clumsy sometimes, so I tend to use qutebrowser more often

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

#276

Post by RMPR »

caleblloyd wrote: post #217

File watchers that rebuild a project when code changes are made. Lots of language SDKs come with these built-in, for those that don't I have found that the `chokidar-cli` npm package can be paired with a shell script to add auto-rebuild to pretty much any project in any language.

entr[1], from their main page

    ls *.css *.html | entr reload-browser Firefox
Is a simple example of things you can do, it is also very lightweight.

[1]: http://entrproject.org/

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

#277

Post by joshschreuder »

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/

I prefer Wizfile [0] personally. It seems better as far as resource consumption than Everything. Wiztree by the same devs is great too as a replacement for WinDirStat.

[0] https://antibody-software.com/web/software/software/wizfile-...

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

#279

Post by boramalper »

perceptronas wrote: post #269

- Windows. By not having to configure drivers and other compatibility problems which I have on Linux it definitely saved me 100 hours. - Listary (windows) Not sure if its 100 hours, but I love its search in any context of explorer. Default explorer search is terrible IMO. For example when you open file - you can use search there instead of navigating by hand.

I guess depends on your use-case but I find Ubuntu vastly superior for development. Perhaps it’s just habitual. :)

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

#280

Post by rajlego »

Probably the spaced repetition application SuperMemo [1]. Beyond normal SRS like anki it has a feature called incremental reading [2] which makes studying at least 3 times as easy for me. I have ADHD so IR helps a lot by taking care of 90% of the complexity of (managing) studying so that I can just focus on what's in front of me.

[1] https://www.supermemo.com/archives1990-2015/english/smintro [2] https://supermemo.guru/wiki/Incremental_reading

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