NimbleText https://nimbletext.com/ has saved me so much time. I use it to generate sql from spreadsheets and other one-off code generation from data.
what's the gain compared to excel and CONCATENATE('code'; A1;';') ?
Ask HN: Programs that saved you 100 hours?
401–410 of 531 posts
Re: Ask HN: Programs that saved you 100 hours?
#402Anything networking that isn't plan 9.
Here's how easy it is to remotely play audio on a stereo hooked to a raspberry pi:
% rimport -a -u mrtea pifi /dev/audio /dev ; play music.mp3
oh, you also wanted to play the mp3's in Shelley's music directory (provided shelley lets us...)?
% rimport -a -u mrtea shelpc /usr/shelley/mp3 mp3 ; play mp3/shelleysfavorite.pls
That rendering job is going to clog up your cpu but you'd rather play doom. instead, run the job on many core server cerberus:
% rcpu -u mrtea -h cerberus -c rendercmd -args
compile and install a program for arm64 so you can also run on raspberry pi 3/4:
% objtype=arm64 mk install
The above commands require little to no configuration or external tools to work. You dial a machine and ask for resources; if you have permission, you will be granted access. If you want a windows domain like network auth you point your systems to a single machines auth server instead of the local auth. The c library is so streamlined that it makes c fun to use again, Go is directly inspired by it. compiler tools kept simple and cross compiling is a non issue, just change objtype. Even system libraries such as tcp communication is dead easy: http://man.postnix.pw/9front/2/dial. No shared libraries. Instead you write programs called file servers which provide services as sharable resources. Every other OS by comparison is horridly is broken.
Unix is broken. OSX is built on broken. Windows took broken to new levels. And every "new" OS is a copy of broken written in fad language du jor; e.g. Redox OS. You want a sane computing platform built by hackers for hackers? Run plan 9.
Re: Ask HN: Programs that saved you 100 hours?
#403The 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…
I couldn't do without a 'bookmarks' feature that I implemented for my terminal. It's triggered with `Alt+b`:
1. Scan an eternal history file for `cd` with absolute path except for /tmp/*
2. Sort and filter out duplicates
3. Call fzf and let user pick the desired result
4. Upon selection don't enter the directory but instead type `cd ` into the prompt so that the user can navigate further using .
What's nice about this approach is that it automatically builds your bookmarks, but only from `cd` commands where you deliberately used an absolute path.
Here's the code. It has some prerequisites (fzf[0] and ~/.eternal_bash_history[1]) and probably only works with my terminal (Xfce Terminal); it took a bit of tinkering to get it to work.
# ~/bashrc.d/aliases.sh
__b() { # bookmarks; props to fzf for providing examples of READLINE configuration
local selected="cd "$(cat ~/.bash_eternal_history | grep '^cd /' | egrep -v '\.\.|/tmp' | awk '{print $2}' | sort | uniq | fzf --exact)
READLINE_LINE="${READLINE_LINE:0:$READLINE_POINT}$selected${READLINE_LINE:$READLINE_POINT}"
READLINE_POINT=$(( READLINE_POINT + ${#selected} ))
}
bind -m vi-insert -x '"\eb": "__b"' 2>/dev/null
Re: Ask HN: Programs that saved you 100 hours?
#404- 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 agree. Recently I switched to Windows 10 Pro from Linux (mostly Arch and Ubuntu) and I don't regret it thus far.
WSL, Docker Desktop and VS Code with WSL integration. It works well enough.
Re: Ask HN: Programs that saved you 100 hours?
#405Earlier quoted context omitted.
How often do you open your IDE though? I switched form VSCode to PHPStorm half a year ago, and while it feels a bit slower, the improvements are so unbelievable worth it for me. It does have a taste for memory, but then again, it easily saves me a lot of time each month, so just throwing RAM at it was a no-brainer for me.
Depends... I'll open/close a few times a day as I touch several projects. I can use VS Code for everything from db/sql, react, node and c# (.net core) projects. I also have used it for a little rust and golang. As to the RAM, it's using around 1.2gb between vs code and the connecting server (WSL2), multiple isntances vary... but with the number of containers and VMs I'm running, I'm generally well over 16gb of use, a…
Yeah, IntelliJ-based IDEs are hungry, but even if mobile, I figure I'd just spend the extra money to get plenty of RAM, it's that good (to me at least).
I usually run 3-5 instances for different projects and it'll hover around 3gb RAM, but it appears that they share a lot of memory, closing one or opening an additional project has no visible impact.
Re: Ask HN: Programs that saved you 100 hours?
#406TamperMonkey! I've dealt with some monstrous websites which needed in-browser user-friendly automation, and TamperMonkey is that tool for the job.
Re: Ask HN: Programs that saved you 100 hours?
#407Karabiner, Keyboard Maestro & Alfred for me. Probably more than 1000 hours at this point. Need to update my macOS repo with more tools I use now. https://github.com/nikitavoloboev/my-mac-os
I'm surprised I had to scroll this far down to find this.
I've been using my own version of 'hyper key'[1] for years now. I map capslock to ctrl (in OSX), then ctrl-space to 'ctrl, command, option' in Karabiner, so that I have a 'namespace' of my own hotkeys, which I assign to apps in apptivate[2] to quick switch, and finally I make it so that if I tap caps without hitting another key, it actually hits escape. I use a two-button combo for hyper instead of just capslock so that capslock on its own is just ctrl, and I can use all the default readline shortcuts.
[1] https://stevelosh.com/blog/2012/10/a-modern-space-cadet/#s14... [2] http://www.apptivateapp.com/
Re: Ask HN: Programs that saved you 100 hours?
#408jq, the command line json processing utility. It makes dealing with very large json streams palatable, and it plays nice with other command line utilities like awk nicely too.
Re: Ask HN: Programs that saved you 100 hours?
#4091) 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) 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. Years ago I saw someone using this (I think it was actually Yakuake) and ran it for a bit. I really didn't like that it was a single session. However, I later messed around with tiling window managers (which relates to your #2!) and having a shortcut to p…
I don't use iTerm2, but I have a global hide/show shortcut via Hammerspoon (https://github.com/cweagans/dotfiles/blob/90764db6146383a92e...). I could extend this to pretty much any app, but the only one I regularly need it for is my terminal.
I like this method a little more because it's not a single session, there's no animation, etc. It just pops into existence exactly how/where I left it, and then goes away again when I'm done with it.
Re: Ask HN: Programs that saved you 100 hours?
#410Using vim as my main editor has incredibly increased my productivity, but learning to use it's macros saved me even a more tremendous amount of time. It takes a while to learn to use it, but after that any kind of repetitive task can be done easily with it. And if combined with some bash and vimscript knowledge, it is even greater.
I have to agree wholeheartedly. Learning vim is quite painful, but it keeps paying off for years, even if you choose to use modern editors with vim bindings. The speed of these bindings for navigating and editing code is really unrivalled. I even use the Vimium Chrome plugin, it's a pleasure there too.
I have been using surfingkeys after using vimium for a while. It has way more features (can use it on pdf page tabs too) and you can customize it endlessly with simple javascript. It also has vim binding for editing text in browser. Highly recommended.