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Ask HN: Which tools have made you a much better programmer?

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Re: Ask HN: Which tools have made you a much better programmer?

#441

Post by vendiddy »

MaxBarraclough wrote: post #134
braindongle wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An excellent list. Regarding functional programming, I recommend starting with a gentle approach that doesn't require picking up a new language: 1. Stop creating counters/loops and become facile with map, reduce, and the like. This will shift your thinking away from blocks and toward functions. 2. Take the time to really understand what side effects are, and start avoiding them everywhere they are not necessary. Keep…

> I recommend starting with a gentle approach that doesn't require picking up a new language Disagree. This is likely to 'dilute' the lessons of functional programming, as it were. If you learn to program in idiomatic Clojure/OCaml/Haskell/Scheme, you can be relatively sure you really have picked up the principles of functional programming. If you merely attempt to apply new principles in an environment you're alread…

I can confirm this. Although I knew the principles of FP, concepts didn't click until I started using a functional language.

In non-FP languages, I didn't originally appreciate the benefits of the pattern. It was more work to do things functionally, so I dismissed some patterns that were actually useful.

I'm a bit biased, but would recommend Elixir as an accessible FP language. It has an accessible syntax and modern tooling.

You may be frustrated with the constraints of immutability for a few weeks, but the benefits become apparent once you're used to it.

Now when I work in non-FP languages like JavaScript, I will apply FP principles when it makes sense.

Re: Ask HN: Which tools have made you a much better programmer?

#443

Post by miku86 »

antirez wrote: post #74

Writing the overall design in plain English before writing the implementation. Not super detailed, but the main data structures and invariants and mechanisms that will make the implementation working. Then start the implementation refining such document as I discover new things.

Exactly this one.

I don't get why the top comments are all about some technical tooling, as if the major part of a developer job would be typing.

Re: Ask HN: Which tools have made you a much better programmer?

#445

Post by MaxBarraclough »

chas wrote: post #412
MaxBarraclough wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I recommend starting with a gentle approach that doesn't require picking up a new language Disagree. This is likely to 'dilute' the lessons of functional programming, as it were. If you learn to program in idiomatic Clojure/OCaml/Haskell/Scheme, you can be relatively sure you really have picked up the principles of functional programming. If you merely attempt to apply new principles in an environment you're alread…

Even in languages where the concepts can be encoded, it can be hard to determine what aspects of a given library are the encoding and which parts are the fundamental ideas if you haven't seen the ideas used in well-suited language. For instance, I didn't really understand the use of functools.reduce[0] or itertools.starmap[1] in Python until I was familiar with zipWith[2] and foldl [3] in Haskell. The ideas themselve…

> it can be hard to determine what aspects of a given library are the encoding and which parts are the fundamental ideas if you haven't seen the ideas used in well-suited language

That's a good point. Using a proper functional programming language doesn't just enable FP ideas (you can't fake a feature like implicit capture of variables), it may also clarify them by reducing baggage.

> I found `functools.reduce(function, iterable, initializer)` significantly more opaque than `foldl :: (b -> a -> b) -> b -> [a] -> b` because the type signature makes it clear what sort of functions are suitable for use as the first argument.

I suspect you're just a better Haskell programmer than me (I've only ever dabbled), but I find the big-mess-of-arrows syntax to be pretty confusing compared to a simple tuple of descriptively named identifiers.

Perhaps related to this: I don't see the practical appeal of currying. Even C++ supports the 'bind' pattern just fine - http://www.cplusplus.com/reference/functional/bind/#example

Re: Ask HN: Which tools have made you a much better programmer?

#446

Post by blntechie »

mekster wrote: post #420
scanr wrote: post #26

The Jetbrains suite. Lightens the cognitive load, makes it easier to refactor and keep code tidy. All of which allow me build better software. For almost everything else e.g. git, learning how to use the command line instead of a UI is the best way for me to learn how the tooling works.

Back then (10+ years ago?), IDEs were meant to be bloated and slow having convoluted interfaces and I only used it when absolutely necessary (like Eclipse for Android before Android Studio became the default) but my, JetBrains saves me so much sanity, it changed the definition of IDE for me (or rather IDE was meant to be like that). I only used lightweight text editors before then. (Used SublimeText before the switch…

VS Code is like 90% good enough for me compared to Eclipse. I was evaluating IDEA and VS Code to switch to and VS Code with its Java extensions was an easy winner considering its launch speed and the responsiveness. IDEA even though tons better than Eclipse still feels clunkier than VS Code.

Re: Ask HN: Which tools have made you a much better programmer?

#447

Post by shawnsbrain66 »

I'm a Windows programmer, but I use: UltraEdit - to say it's a text editor is to say a Ferrari is a car. Powerbasic - a lot of people don't know PB and Python came out the same year. Fast, powerful, full access to windows API, pointers, classes, tiny EXE's, can use any standard DLL, and can make DLL's. JellyFish - a PowerBasic IDE that is, in my opinion, better than the PB native IDE Paint Shop Pro - a far cheaper and easier alternative to PhotoShop with all the stuff I need

These are the 3 tools I use the most to make my living.

Re: Ask HN: Which tools have made you a much better programmer?

#448

Post by rovr138 »

artemisart wrote: post #439
aryc19 wrote: post #424

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What benefits do you see in fish when compared to zsh?

I would say fish is to zsh like what zsh is to bash. More seriously, for a start: good defaults, highlighting and autosuggestion built-in, parameters search with help and completion... (but it's not Posix).

Regarding POSIX, I've been using Fish for about 4 years now.

POSIX always comes up, how it's a deal breaker.I want to mention that I build all my scripts as POSIX as I can or using Bash extensions. You keep having Bash/ZSH on your machine, so you can still use your scripts and don't miss anything. Shebang's keeps working,

    #!/bin/sh
    #!/bin/bash
    #!/bin/zsh
Personally, I actually don't change my default shell (chsh step). I simply set my terminal to use the fish command instead of invoking the default shell.

    - Gnome Terminal, there's a Title and Command tab. You can set a custom command there. Just put the path to fish
    - Terminal.app, Preferences > Profiles > Shell > Run command
    - iTerm.app, Preferences > Profiles > General > Command
    - Tmux, on your .tmux.conf `set -g default-shell /usr/local/bin/fish`
It's more portable for me that way.

Re: Ask HN: Which tools have made you a much better programmer?

#449

Post by rovr138 »

shostack wrote: post #276
tchaffee wrote: post #111

Lately, using Jupyter notebooks. It's a paradigm change, and pretty close to what I would imagine Donald Knuth had in mind with literate programming. Just for example, being able to see the shape of variables and having that output stay there between coding sessions is a huge time saver. Add being able to plot data and using other visual tools right inside your code and well, I could go on and on. Just try it. It's l…

How do you integrate it into your workflow? Is your program scattered across blocks in a notebook or is it easy to pull everything together once it works the way you want? Also, thoughts on jupyter vs co ok colaboratory?

Not who you asked, but I use it to test things out. You can export the notebook to code.

You can comment out code or refactor then on your IDE or just copy & paste once it's working into a function/method.

I also know some people that just need to run things every now and then and they just launch the notebook and run it.

Re: Ask HN: Which tools have made you a much better programmer?

#450

Post by droid_w »

gitgud wrote: post #332
the_pwner224 wrote: post #270

TabNine: https://www.tabnine.com/blog/deep (the code are GIFs which I had to click to play) This thing is fucking magic. It's ML autocomplete, with help from 'traditional' autocomplete methods that use static analysis. Instead of just completing one token at a time like traditional completers, it can do entire sentences or multiple lines of code in one go, and is freakishly accurate. And since it parses language it h…

I love TabNine but had to stop using it because each instance can use 3GB of memory... Way too much for an autocomplete extension https://github.com/codota/TabNine/issues/43

Codota/TabNine CEO here. TabNine's memory requirements are derived from the inherent memory consumption of a large neural model. We are actively working on a lightweight model. You can try our Pro plan which uses GPU-accelerated cloud servers (2 weeks free trial) instead of predicting the model on your machine
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