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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?

#321

Post by serf »

hombre_fatal wrote: post #125

1) Any terminal that you can summon/dismiss with a global hotkey. Examples are Guake for Linux and iTerm2 for OSX. I consider this a must-have for all developers. 2) Anything that lets you resize/place windows with hotkeys. For example, Divvy for OSX. Divvy is also nice because if you press the hotkey multiple times, it cycles the application through each of your monitors. No need to ever use your mouse to move/resiz…

>2) Anything that lets you resize/place windows with hotkeys. For example, Divvy for OSX. Divvy is also nice because if you press the hotkey multiple times, it cycles the application through each of your monitors. No need to ever use your mouse to move/resize a window ever again.

Aquasnap is an OKish windows equivalent. The best i've found, at least.

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

#324

Post by stared »

Qbserve (https://qotoqot.com/qbserve/) when I was on macOS, now RescueTime + Custom New URL Tab (Chrome extension) pointing to https://www.rescuetime.com/browse/productivity/by/hour/, so I get immediate feedback on my productivity (motivates me to keep moving) or slacking (motivates me to start working).

I cannot stress enough the word immediate. Delayed reports (after a week, after a day, or whenever I check) sure give a bit of reality-check and insight on what to change (usually only the first time) but were not useful for actually implementing these changes. (I have ADHD if that matters. For some people insight might be enough.)

Qbserve displays constantly the current productivity score. I had a love&meh relationship with RescueTime (since it does not offer a way to display productivity tracking all the time), but after composing it with a link to report on a new tab (my most common way of procrastination), it was a game-changer.

A small note - if you prefer something more private, and open-source, there is https://github.com/ActivityWatch/activitywatch (I use it as well). Not as polished, but clearly logging well, and it has Web UI on localhost, thus can be used with Custome New URL Tab as well.

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

#325

Post by heavenlyblue »

superasn wrote: post #285

I would definitely say PHPStorm. The amount of productivity gains are tremendous. A lot of good editors have the issue that they are quite rigid when it comes to operating between multiple languages. So while your editor may shine at JavaScript, it won't understand vuejs templates or when you put Javascript code inside a php file. This is where PhpStorm really shines. It can even complete your SQL statements inside p…

The documentation from JetBrains is horrible.

I still could not configure the correct build step for XML-based javax forms as part of Gravel build process. And that’s supposed to be one of the easiest parts?

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

#326

Post by klntsky »

hombre_fatal wrote: post #125

1) Any terminal that you can summon/dismiss with a global hotkey. Examples are Guake for Linux and iTerm2 for OSX. I consider this a must-have for all developers. 2) Anything that lets you resize/place windows with hotkeys. For example, Divvy for OSX. Divvy is also nice because if you press the hotkey multiple times, it cycles the application through each of your monitors. No need to ever use your mouse to move/resiz…

> 1)

You don't need a separate terminal just for that. It's better to automate your window manager to open the terminal. I use this with tmux and i3:

  #!/usr/bin/env bash
  tmux new-window -t 0 -c "$1"
  i3-msg 'workspace 1' # switch to i3 workspace where my terminal is placed
I also use distinct hotkeys to specify which directory to cd to (the script above accepts a directory as argument).

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

#328

Post by AdamGibbins »

bogidon wrote: post #181

- keeping all your configuration files (“dotfiles”: shell, git, etc) in one, version controlled place. Makes setting up new machines so much less stressful. Here are mine in case you’re interested, for macOS and Ubuntu: https://github.com/Bogidon/dotfiles - setting up a personal vpn with a reserved IP if you connect to services that require your IP to be whitelisted and you move often - for git cli: dashes take you b…

Alfred has a clipboard manager built in, what does Paste offer over it that justifies its fee for you?
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