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Ask HN: What are the cool life hacks for Developer?

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Re: Ask HN: What are the cool life hacks for Developer?

#41

Post by roryisok »

puzzles wrote: post #35
cyberferret wrote: post #26

Have another, totally unrelated to coding (or even computer) passion nearby to your work desk that you can go to in order to reboot your brain from time to time. I have my collection of guitars behind my work desk, and every time I am waiting for a download or process to run, I force myself to NOT just open another browser tab for Facebook/Youtube or revisit my emails and instead reach for an instrument and take my b…

Great advice. I started building quadcopters recently, and it's been great to combine technology with 'manual labor'. I've never been into DIY stuff before, but it's tons of fun!

I really want to do that. My soldering / electronics skills are non existent though. I build lego

Re: Ask HN: What are the cool life hacks for Developer?

#42

Post by ff_ »

wingerlang wrote: post #16

Automation. My number one thing might be learning to use multiple cursors in Sublime, I probably jump into it 10 times a day to psuedo-automate text editing. I wrote of one example here: http://jontelang.com/blog/2016/06/22/sublime-efficiency.html Another thing is, also automation, to use Hazel to automatically keep my temp files manageable. Basically, when I file is older than X days, move it to a "need review" fold…

+1!

Instead of using Hazel I directly set an "rm -rf ~/Downloads/*" at every restart. This way I only save files when I really move them instead of having them pile up there.

Funny fact: at some point it was mounted in ram, but I couldn't download files larger than half of the ram. :D

Re: Ask HN: What are the cool life hacks for Developer?

#43

Post by mobiuscog »

geocar wrote: post #25

Go outside. It's not just important to actually enjoy the life you're trying to hack together, it's also healthier, and if neither of those reasons will convince you, it'll also make you a better programmer: Too many programmers think they need to get in front of a screen to start "programming", when in actuality they're just spending themselves, and responding to what they see. Only thinking about the problem fully…

Walking - clear your head and don't think about anything technical - for at least 30 minutes, preferable more.

Re: Ask HN: What are the cool life hacks for Developer?

#44

Post by collyw »

geocar wrote: post #25

Go outside. It's not just important to actually enjoy the life you're trying to hack together, it's also healthier, and if neither of those reasons will convince you, it'll also make you a better programmer: Too many programmers think they need to get in front of a screen to start "programming", when in actuality they're just spending themselves, and responding to what they see. Only thinking about the problem fully…

Totally agree, and this is party why I hate coding tests for interviews. Writing good code starts with decent understanding of the problem and thought put into the design. Rushing that for some time limit is completely counterproductive.

Re: Ask HN: What are the cool life hacks for Developer?

#45

Post by roryisok »

greenspot wrote: post #39

Nobody mentions 'meet women' [1]. Maybe too simple but from my perspective an important part in this equation. Meeting women is a bit like doing sales. it's more of an outgoing activity and being extrovert. So rather the contrary of coding. This is refreshing, gives me balance and a nice change to my day to day life as a coder. [1] For the sake of verbal simplicity, I use the term 'women' for people of the opposite g…

or 'meet men', if you happen to BE a woman, and / or are not into women.

While I appreciate that finding a partner in life is very important, I don't know if it really falls under the umbrella of "developer life hack".

Re: Ask HN: What are the cool life hacks for Developer?

#46

Post by roryisok »

geocar wrote: post #25

Go outside. It's not just important to actually enjoy the life you're trying to hack together, it's also healthier, and if neither of those reasons will convince you, it'll also make you a better programmer: Too many programmers think they need to get in front of a screen to start "programming", when in actuality they're just spending themselves, and responding to what they see. Only thinking about the problem fully…

+1 - I think about a problem so much better when I'm away from my PC, usually when I'm out walking or driving somewhere.

Re: Ask HN: What are the cool life hacks for Developer?

#47

Post by cyberferret »

singingfish wrote: post #37
cyberferret wrote: post #26

Have another, totally unrelated to coding (or even computer) passion nearby to your work desk that you can go to in order to reboot your brain from time to time. I have my collection of guitars behind my work desk, and every time I am waiting for a download or process to run, I force myself to NOT just open another browser tab for Facebook/Youtube or revisit my emails and instead reach for an instrument and take my b…

At one point I was picking up my soprano sax during test runs on a regular basis. Doesn't work so well in an open plan office mind you :)

LOL - this is one of the benefits of working remotely from home that I have, I guess... When really frustrated, I can crank the amp to 11... Bonus is that during the working day, most of my neighbours are out at work/school, so nil complaints... ;)

Re: Ask HN: What are the cool life hacks for Developer?

#48

Post by malcolmocean »

gabemart wrote: post #31

If you're not already, use browser shortcuts when you know where you want to go. A few weeks ago I read about an American civilian pilot who was out on a training flight and by chance ran into the Japanese air fleet over Pearl Harbour - becoming one of the first Americans to learn of the imminent attack. I don't remember any details beyond that. If I wanted to read about that pilot on wikipedia, I guess I could navig…

I really like this "I'm feeling kind of lucky" feature that Google search used to ship with Firefox and that still works:

http://www.google.com/search?ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&sourceid=navc...

It goes straight to the first result if the result is very good, otherwise shows you the search results.

Re: Ask HN: What are the cool life hacks for Developer?

#49

Post by roryisok »

AutoHotKey: if you're on windows like me (and starting to feel in the minority on here), this is a must. I've been evangelising AHK for the last 7 years at least, to anyone who will listen. It has saved me days of my life in accumulated time. Here are a few samples of things from my main script which I use daily

    CTRL+@ - paste my email address. saves buckets of time logging into things, signing up to things etc

    ]t - paste date-time in the format 2016-08-12 09:53 
    ]d - paste date in the format Friday, August 12, 2016

    #ho - open windows hosts file in notepad

    ALT+MOUSEWHEEL - page up, down with each movement

    F11 - switch to thumbnail view in explorer
    SHIFT-F11 - switch to detail view in explorer
I also have a universal autocorrect script which I've filled with common typos so I can't type 'pulbic', 'widnows', 'anywya' etc (had to disable the script to type those in here)

On top of this, an autocomplete / intellisense script for html / js dev.

Chocolatey: Apt-get for windows. If you ever need to install anything, you can open a web-browser, google the thing you want, open the page, find the installer, download it, open explorer, find the exe, run it, step through the options and get on with your day. OR, if you have Chocolatey installed you can just open powershell and type "choco install vlc" or whatever it is, silently.

The best feature of choco is that you can chain things together. You can write a script that installs everything you need in life, and have a new machine up and running in no-time.

Synergy+: If you use more than one machine, you can share the mouse, keyboard and clipboard - even across operating systems. Put the two screens side by side, configure, and they might aswell be one machine with two monitors.

Re: Ask HN: What are the cool life hacks for Developer?

#50

Post by jshholland »

copperx wrote: post #34
dreeves wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(I'm a Beeminder cofounder) This is good feedback; thank you! We're mostly ok with targeting the particular psychology that this kind of thing works for (our very self-serving characterization thereof: http://blog.beeminder.com/typebee ) but what about adding enough social accountability that you wouldn't cheat? We don't have many social features but you can just point some friends/family at the url of your Beeminder…

Thank you for your reply. I think social accountability would only work if (1) someone else could tell whether I'm cheating (that's not happening in a personal project) and (2) cares enough to check my graph. Maybe my cheapness trumps my integrity. Or more positively, I reframe the meaning of the price: what does $5 buy me in Beeminder? an accurate data point. Is $5 worth an accurate data point? depends on what I'm p…

It's not just $5 for an accurate data point; it's $5 to convince yourself that the commitment to the goal is really real. Betting for free is very different to betting for real money.
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