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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?

#371

Post by m463 »

boramalper wrote: post #279
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. :)

I have to use ubuntu sometimes (18.04) but my personal favorite distro is Arch Linux.

- you will run the latest software

- from the very beginning you are involved and personally responsible for your machine.

- the wiki is very well written

- no periodic upgrade hell, since it has rolling updates (everything is always updating all the time)

- if software is not in the repository, it has AUR, which will help you build anything that is missing

Ubuntu is a necessary evil, but I don't like some things:

  /etc/default/apport
  /etc/default/kerneloops
  /etc/default/motd-news
  snapd
  unattended-upgrades
  ubuntu-report
  whoopsie

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

#372

Post by leu-mas »

dceddia wrote: post #100

The Z command line utility has saved me a ton of time. It remembers the directories you’ve visited and lets you jump to them with just a few characters. Almost like Chrome’s autocomplete for recently-visited directories (if you’re used to being able to type “g” to go to gmail or “n” for “news.ycombinator.com”...). For instance I can run “z B” and it’ll jump to my ~/Business directory (and “z ss” would do the same). h…

another popular alternative I see mentioned a lot https://github.com/wting/autojump

> autojump is a faster way to navigate your filesystem. It works by maintaining a database of the directories you use the most from the command line.

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

#373

Post by boramalper »

m463 wrote: post #371
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 have to use ubuntu sometimes (18.04) but my personal favorite distro is Arch Linux. - you will run the latest software - from the very beginning you are involved and personally responsible for your machine. - the wiki is very well written - no periodic upgrade hell, since it has rolling updates (everything is always updating all the time) - if software is not in the repository, it has AUR, which will help you build…

I miss Arch occasionally but I don’t like being responsible for the operation of my machine; I would rather delegate it to the operating system. ;)

The good thing about Ubuntu is that it’s the default “Linux” (distribution) so whatever you are looking for, there is likely an AskUbuntu question, a .deb package, a blogpost, or a mailing-list entry to help.

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

#374

Post by Endlessly »

DanBC wrote: post #338
Endlessly wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Here's an example that I don't quite understand yet. [nhs inurl:mcusercontent.com] = 2 hits. [covid-19 nhs inurl:mcusercontent.com] = 90 hits. [covid-19 "nhs" inurl:mcusercontent.com] = 90 hits. I'd expect that first one to include all the second, but it doesn't. I thought maybe the second is ignoring the NHS word, so I wrap it in double quotes to force it to be included and it returns the same results.

Google has always had variations between the [query keywords] results of the “Google indexes” AND the “literal website keyword instances/indexes”; that’s not new, unrelated to search operations aside from the fact that advanced search operators make this more easy to see.

(In fact, the article I linked to references this as a way to do quality assurance on Google’s indexing on content on your own domains.)

———

Note that the sum of the counts for the following three queries:

[“aaa” AND “bbb” site:domain.com]

[“aaa” AND -“bbb” site:domain.com]

[-“aaa” AND “bbb” site:domain.com]

...in theory should equal count of this query:

[“aaa” OR “bbb” site:domain.com]

...in practice though, they never have; by never, since Google first released their search results.

——

Further, while counts frequently are over 1000, only the first 1000 search results are viewable, and vast majority of searches only pull the first 10 results and review an even smaller percentage of those 10 results.

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

#375

Post by gitgud »

williamdclt wrote: post #351
jldugger wrote: post #94

For better or worse, I find GUI git clients to be less useful than the CLI. But like any CLI tool, it's productivity is limited by your ability to type without errors. Git has an Autocorrect[1] that will help you out. > git config --global help.autocorrect 1 Based on bash history data, I've also added a simple alias to my bash config: > alias gti="git" [1]: https://git-scm.com/book/en/v2/Customizing-Git-Git-Configura…

There's a section of people that I belong to, that aren't fans of the GUI clients because it doesn't fit in their workflows but also find the CLI not productive enough. We start writing aliases and custom scripts. We integrate git with FZF. Well for all of these people: I recently found Lazygit ( https://github.com/jesseduffield/lazygit ) which is a terminal UI for git and that does exactly what I've been looking for…

I think I've used a very similar one called LazyDocker. But after a while I found that it wasn't that useful, and I don't like seeing the "donate" button in my face all day (call me old-fashioned).

The true power of CLI apps comes from "alias" commands that you build up yourself. The following commands are great examples of this:

    alias docker-kill-all='docker kill `docker ps -aq`'
    alias docker-rm-all='docker rm `docker ps -aq`'
After a while I've learnt that a gui or cli-gui can never compose as well as the terminal can...

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

#376

Post by m463 »

hiq wrote: post #179
jldugger wrote: post #94

For better or worse, I find GUI git clients to be less useful than the CLI. But like any CLI tool, it's productivity is limited by your ability to type without errors. Git has an Autocorrect[1] that will help you out. > git config --global help.autocorrect 1 Based on bash history data, I've also added a simple alias to my bash config: > alias gti="git" [1]: https://git-scm.com/book/en/v2/Customizing-Git-Git-Configura…

"Based on bash history data" is an interesting point, because it highlights that you can use your history to periodically check what you do inefficiently in the terminal, and which aliases you still need to add to your config: compute some statistics on the number of 1-word and 2-word commands you use the most, and see if they are more than e.g. 4 letters. With zsh: "history 1 | awk '{print $2}' | sort | uniq -c | so…

I make one change to every new .bashrc file.

I change this:

  HISTSIZE=1000
  HISTFILESIZE=2000
to:

  HISTSIZE=1000000
  HISTFILESIZE=2000000
You would be surprised how useful this one change has been, answering historical questions easily, like how to generate that rsa key, or what packages did I install for that project last year.

You can usuall answer questions with ^r instead of the man page. Or maybe:

  "history | grep -C 10 "

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

#377

Post by pacifika »

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…

For an PHP focused editor it’s unfortunate that it isn’t possible to format 100% WordPress Coding Standards compliant code.

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

#378

Post by whoisjohnkid »

Goland - an IDE that specializes in Golang projects.

The following features have saved me 100s of hours:

  - Being able to run tests/benchmarks directly in a test file via either clicking the play button or using a keyboard shortcut

  - It’s refactor support

  - automatically getting imports ordered and code formatted on save

  - multicursor support

  - and even more!
One of the few IDEs I would actually pay for if my company didn’t already pay for it.

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

#380

Post by [deleted] »

blaerk wrote: post #209

* pass, the standard unix password manager https://www.passwordstore.org/ . Instead of stopping whatever I'm doing, thinking about what password I used last time something forced me to rotate, pass saves the day! * AwesomeWM, https://awesomewm.org/ . Maybe not a program per se, anyway using easy-to-remember keyboard shortcuts instead of clicking through a gui probably saved me a few minutes here and there. * Gentoo P…

[deleted]
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