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

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

#361

Post by LeonM » Mon, Apr 13, 2020, 11:37 AM UTC

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…

+1 For JetBrains products. Possibly the only piece of software that I happily pay the yearly renewal on.

I use PHPStorm and DataGrip on a daily professional basis. I use PyCharm (CE) and CLion for side projects.

> P.S. My only issue with it is that writing plugins for it is kinda hard. Since it is so extendable it's only expected that programmers would want to extend it with their own plugins

Out of curiosity, what kind of plugins do you (want to) write?

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

#362

Post by m463 » Mon, Apr 13, 2020, 11:43 AM UTC

dnhz wrote: post #112

wwweston wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anyone know what the best way to set up Emacs on macOS is?

I just use this version. https://emacsformacosx.com/ I have a one line shell script that then lets me start Emacs from the cmd line. something like open -A [path to applications/emacs startup] $@ This supports emacs —daemon

That is what I use.

Additionally in my .bashrc I have:

  EMACS="/Applications/Emacs.app/Contents/MacOS/Emacs"
  EMACSPOS="-g 140x66+655+23 --fullheight"
  e() { ( $EMACS $EMACSPOS "$@" & ) }

I also have it in the dock, but sometimes environment variables are not set up properly.

For this case, I create a plist file ~/.MacOSX/environment.plist and can add stuff to it like this:

    add_plist PATH "$PATH"

where:

  add_plist () {
    /usr/libexec/PlistBuddy -c 'Delete :'"$1" ~/.MacOSX/environment.plist >/dev/null
    /usr/libexec/PlistBuddy -c 'Add :'"$1"' string "'"$2"'"' ~/.MacOSX/environment.plist >/dev/null
  }

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

#363

Post by nicoburns » Mon, Apr 13, 2020, 11:44 AM UTC

rhlsthrm wrote: post #360

nicoburns wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my case, often several times an hour. I work across 6-10 dofferent repositories. Opening them all at once is impractical, so being able to open each of the them quickly is quite important.

Have you tried multiple repositories in a VSCode workspace? It does a great job of managing multiple repos, git diffs, etc.

The problem I have with this is it makes "Go to file" functionality a bit too broad. e.g. If I want to open `package.json` I now have to choose between 10 different files. As I often `Cmd-P`, type pa, `Enter` without even looking, this makes it considerably slower.

I also have to do a lot of context switching (e.g. to review someone else's code), and being able to have a separate set of tabs (even within the same repo) is super-useful for this.

At previous jobs with less separated out code, I have taken this approach (although with Sublime Text rather than VSCode).

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

#364

Post by mam2 » Mon, Apr 13, 2020, 11:49 AM UTC

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…

what's the difference between 1 and "ctrl alt t" ?

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

#365

Post by superasn » Mon, Apr 13, 2020, 11:49 AM UTC

LeonM wrote: post #361

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…

+1 For JetBrains products. Possibly the only piece of software that I happily pay the yearly renewal on. I use PHPStorm and DataGrip on a daily professional basis. I use PyCharm (CE) and CLion for side projects. > P.S. My only issue with it is that writing plugins for it is kinda hard. Since it is so extendable it's only expected that programmers would want to extend it with their own plugins Out of curiosity, what k…

> Out of curiosity, what kind of plugins do you (want to) write?

I wanted to write a plugin to enhance Vuejs (auto import mixins, etc). The current vue plugin is good lacks a few features which I wanted to fix but I couldn't figure it out.

There are tutorials done by the Jetbrains ceo himself but I think they are outdated now. It was supposed to be a fun weekend project but due to the disorganised nature of the plugin docs I really couldn't make any progress, especially because i found testing my plugin really hard.

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

#366

Post by Ozlone » Mon, Apr 13, 2020, 11:53 AM UTC

sudeepto_dutta wrote: post #76

Ozlone wrote: post #29

- Emacs (with evil mode) and org-mode. The hours gained far outweigh the hours put in (and the hours put in were fun). - Yabai on mac for not having to think about moving windows around. - Pomodoro (now through org-mode) for helping focus (and saving hours, in a round-about-way.) - Removing as much advertising from my life as possible. (Ublock origin, deleting social networks when possible)

How is your experience with Yabai ? I just read about it but reluctant to try it . How stable is it ? Can we switch spaces with it ?

It's great. So far so good. I think I can switch spaces using skhd (by the same developer) [1] alongside it. I can definitely send windows to spaces, but still use ctrl + right/left arrow to navigate spaces. [1] https://github.com/koekeishiya/skhd

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

#367

Post by Ozlone » Mon, Apr 13, 2020, 11:54 AM UTC

arkanciscan wrote: post #149

Ozlone wrote: post #29

- Emacs (with evil mode) and org-mode. The hours gained far outweigh the hours put in (and the hours put in were fun). - Yabai on mac for not having to think about moving windows around. - Pomodoro (now through org-mode) for helping focus (and saving hours, in a round-about-way.) - Removing as much advertising from my life as possible. (Ublock origin, deleting social networks when possible)

Any idea how to delete this social network (hacker news)? It's the last one I still use.

Same, mostly, other than the fediverse. Anything with ads and targeted marketing is more the problem, imo.

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

#368

Post by bluejedi » Mon, Apr 13, 2020, 11:56 AM UTC

aapokiiso wrote: post #291

boramalper wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I've used Ubuntu for development for the last 5 years, but due to the quarantine & hardware issues at home, I figured I'd give Windows a shot. With WSL 2 (Windows Subsystem for Linux 2) available, it's gotten so good! I can run our dev stack with similar performance to Ubuntu inside the subsystem, while simultaneously enjoying the larger ecosystem of Windows. The only major roadblock I encountered was with PHPStorm,…

Have you tried \\wsl$ , i use sublimetext windows to open file in wsl with that default share

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

#369

Post by e_proxus » Mon, Apr 13, 2020, 11:59 AM UTC

sa3dany wrote: post #220

WindowsKey+Shift+S for taking screenshots for a part of the screen.

You can also change so that PrtScn directly opens the snipping tool which is far superior by checking “Use the PrtScn button to open screen snipping” in Settings > Ease of Access > Keyboard: https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/398094200710889482/68...

This equivalent to the new macOS Mojave shortcut Command+Shift+5.

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

#370

Post by keiferski » Mon, Apr 13, 2020, 12:01 PM UTC

Bit of a non-traditional answer, but: Spaced Repetition Software generally and Anki specifically.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaced_repetition

https://apps.ankiweb.net

There are two ways in which it’s saved me hundreds of hours. These are of course anecdotal, but the science behind Spaced Repetition is pretty solid.

1. We naturally forget information after a certain amount of time. Much of this information has to be relearned at some point; I’d estimate we end up learning the same fact at least a dozen times over the course of our lifetime. SRS can cut this relearning time to the minimum necessary.

2. By optimizing for ‘daily maximum possible learning.’ This is related to the Spacing Effect and it’s a crucial idea underlying SRS.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spacing_effect

In my personal experience, there is a limit to the amount of information you can meaningful acquire per day. After that point, it becomes a waste of time and effort. So, by dividing learning materials into smaller pieces and spreading them out over time, you can reduce the amount of time needed to learn them.

This is particularly relevant for useful-but-not-urgent information, like alphabets or geography. For example, trying to learn and remember the Russian alphabet in a single day will probably take you a few hours, if not all day. Learn one letter per day over the course of three months, however, and your daily time requirement is perhaps a few minutes. The retention rate per minute of time invested is dramatically higher.