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Ask HN: Programs that saved you 100 hours? (2022 edition)

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Re: Ask HN: Programs that saved you 100 hours? (2022 edition)

#391

Post by temende »

beernutz wrote: post #326
kklemon wrote: post #151

Vimium. Vim-like shortcuts for the browser. I can't name any other tool or extension that gives me anywhere near the productivity boost of Vimium. I spend probably half of my work day plus a few hours a day in my spare time in the browser, and it makes navigating the browser feel like butter. When I'm tired and don't want to be glued to my desk, I can relax and surf with one hand which just feels incredible. I quickl…

If you like Vimium, you should check out SurfingKeys. It is similar but seems to have even more going for it: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/surfingkeys/gfblio...

What do you like about SurfingKeys over Vimium? At a quick glance, seems to have many of the same commands, maybe SurfingKeys just has a few more.

Re: Ask HN: Programs that saved you 100 hours? (2022 edition)

#392

Post by analog31 »

whoisburbansky wrote: post #177
akira2501 wrote: post #83

LSP. The Language Server Protocol. Entirely changed my life for the better this year, once I took the time to get it integrated into Emacs and get the various backends I needed installed. Easily has saved me hundreds of hours so far, being able to view function prototypes quickly, pull up documentation as an overlay on the code, jumping to the next error, and even down to getting simple things like enumerated 'case'…

What language(s) do you do most of your work in?

I'm not the above, but also love LSP... for Python.

Re: Ask HN: Programs that saved you 100 hours? (2022 edition)

#393

Post by analog31 »

systemvoltage wrote: post #303
towawy wrote: post #135

Microsoft Excel. Manipulating tens or hundreds of thousands of rows, including cross-referencing across tables, is just so satisfying and much faster than doing it with a DB or code. Alternative spreadsheet software do some things better, but they don't come close as a complete package, I don't regret paying for it myself for the first time in my life. It such a life saver in a pinch. Obligatory Spolsky intro to Exce…

Pssh... adults use JMP ;-): https://www.jmp.com/en_us/software/data-analysis-software.ht... Trivia: JMP stands for "John's Macintosh Project". Also, the entire semiconductor industry depends on JMP just like the entire pharmaceutical industry depends on Minitab.

I work at a shop where a few people are JMP users. I think it's a problem when a proprietary app is only available to a handful of users at a site -- they tend to get a lot of work dumped on them, and nobody can use their stuff without going back to them. It's a different experience when a site has a site license.

This isn't specific to JMP of course. A good thing about Excel is that businesses are OK with just paying for "everybody" to have it.

Also, people use Excel for more than analysis. It's also a crude database and platform for creating small "apps" that do things, that are easy to share with others.

Re: Ask HN: Programs that saved you 100 hours? (2022 edition)

#394

Post by 8ytecoder »

worldsavior wrote: post #364
stackbutterflow wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the go-to example whenever IDEs are discussed on HN but I...almost never do that? I don't think I can count on two hands the number of times I have to do that in a year. As for undoing it I don't think I've ever done it at all. Anyway it doesn't matter because vim + CoC can do it. And for undoing it I guess I simply rename it back to the original name. Actually I just tried and yeah, it works. One of these day…

Or you don't see the potential, or you're not comfortable, or you don't have energy for this. If you did get the hang of it (vim for example), you would probably use it in some kind of way.

There are definitely two kinds of coders - once that think through everything or at least when it comes to names, method definitions and such they just know what they want. Then there are people like me who is never satisfied with the name or the parameters or the order in which they are passed or the name of the parameters or how the function is structured and want to split it further...etc. So I'm constantly reaching for the refactoring tools of IntelliJ.

OR, as you said, since I have mostly used IDEs all my life, I've learnt to leverage these tools and so I don't always aim to write something to perfection the very first time. Instead I use my IDE as a whiteboard and see where it goes.

Re: Ask HN: Programs that saved you 100 hours? (2022 edition)

#395

Post by jodrellblank »

mastudebaker wrote: post #45

On windows, http://symbolclick.com/index.htm is great for XML and JSON viewing. Use it pretty much everyday. Really love the way it display data in a table format.

Microsoft offerx XMLNotepad for a similar idea, but free (gratis and libre): https://microsoft.github.io/XmlNotepad/

(I haven't used Symbolclick, presumably it has more features or something for the money)

Re: Ask HN: Programs that saved you 100 hours? (2022 edition)

#397

Post by 8ytecoder »

nomel wrote: post #280
mikojan wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Go, command line: $ gorename -from '"my-package".myFunc' -to myRenamedFunc

I would say that’s a fairly trivial example. How about renaming a method? Or, moving a class to a different file?

Or reordering parameters.

Re: Ask HN: Programs that saved you 100 hours? (2022 edition)

#398

Post by cyberge99 »

yawnxyz wrote: post #377
towawy wrote: post #135

Microsoft Excel. Manipulating tens or hundreds of thousands of rows, including cross-referencing across tables, is just so satisfying and much faster than doing it with a DB or code. Alternative spreadsheet software do some things better, but they don't come close as a complete package, I don't regret paying for it myself for the first time in my life. It such a life saver in a pinch. Obligatory Spolsky intro to Exce…

I don't have a Windows machine, and I'm having mixed feeling about Excel for Mac — is it as powerful as the Windows version? Are they exactly the same or are there big difference in functionality? The web / Office360 version doesn't seem much better, either though.

Native Excel on macos isn’t bad. I’m on an M1 and it’s slow to start initially, but once loaded it’s fine. Better than any web version.

Re: Ask HN: Programs that saved you 100 hours? (2022 edition)

#399

Post by ikrenji »

rscrawfo wrote: post #276
ikrenji wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

slow? i use both pycharm and webstorm and their are definitely neither kludgy nor slow...

Curious, why not just used IntelliJ with the plugins for python? I’ve never used the standalone apps. Do they provide a better experience?

idk, i just assumed that pycharm would be optimized out of the box for python, so i never bothered with intelliJ

Re: Ask HN: Programs that saved you 100 hours? (2022 edition)

#400

Post by TeeMassive »

ayewo wrote: post #278
TeeMassive wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At my job I was introduced to functional programming with Python with strong typing. I was at first rushing implementing ~50 business rules (which changed weekly) on the setup of a system. Then this functional wise kid came along and we did in one week what took me 5 weeks. Along with that, using MQTT to separate your program with Protobuf makes everything so much easier. Program crashes? Let it burn and let systemd…

Can you share more about Python with strong typing?

We use mypy and we enforce it on the CI. Ambiguous types are forbidden. We catch lot of bugs with this.
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