Ask HN: What are your favorite developer-efficiency tips?

Post by mekster » Sat, May 09, 2020, 3:33 PM UTC

kanyethegreat wrote: post #185

MauranKilom wrote: post #107

- Your eyes are the only broadband connection into the brain, and they have millenia of pattern recognition training built into them. When solving problems like debugging, refactoring or data preparation, consider arranging information in a way that takes advantage of this. When it's in the right shape, irregularities or patterns will often just jump at you. - Relatedly, your eyes are also extremely well-adapted to d…

I spent a short time trying to find a pretty diff tool, but couldn't really find one to my liking. So just ended up using a bash function that did some decorating on the diff output.

Post by applecrazy » Sat, May 09, 2020, 3:36 PM UTC

afc wrote: post #413

applecrazy wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Genuine question: do you think that writing your own editor was a better investment than extensively customizing an existing editor like Vim or Emacs (even going so far as to change the keybinds and UI)?

Good question. I guess I'll never know for sure. I believe it has been worth it for me, as there are several things I can do now that I'm not sure whether I'd have been able to achieve by customizing them (unless you include "rewriting their source code extensively" as customizing them; but at that point I think I'd be roughly doing the same as what I did?). I'll give three examples: 1. Being able to run edge -view=a…

Post by mekster » Sat, May 09, 2020, 3:48 PM UTC

gilbetron wrote: post #428

H8crilA wrote: post #165

From my experience - multiple desktops, especially when having multiple monitors (and yes, you should probably get a second monitor). If you don't use desktop switching: the basic idea is to have one desktop per task/bug/project. Lets you context-switch in a very organized manner. If you're using them, good, but you may be surprised how many people don't!

I've been developing for 30+ years and I honestly don't see much of a productivity benefit using multiple monitors. I work differently when I have them, but not necessarily more efficiently. I find the head moving required to use multiple monitors more annoying than just alt-tabbing between windows. The only major exception is if I'm doing intense UI or visualization work and I want to see my code and the output at t…

Post by mekster » Sat, May 09, 2020, 3:54 PM UTC

kanyethegreat wrote: post #189

llarsson wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not just that. Add this to you inputrc: "\e[A": history-search-backward "\e[B": history-search-forward Now up and down arrows will search your history with whatever you already have typed at the prompt. Re-running a command often? Probably just have to type its first letter and hit up arrow once or twice.

I like fzf for command history search. Ctrl-r, then fuzzy search the command, arrow up and down. Nirvana

Post by mekster » Sat, May 09, 2020, 3:57 PM UTC

beamatronic wrote: post #170

Find when you get into the zone. I get into the zone at almost exactly 5pm every day.