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

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

#471

Post by darekkay »

XCSme wrote: post #59

The REST Client VSCode extension[0] let's you send HTTP request from any file open in the editor. I use it to call the Cloudflare API to purge the cache of my site after I make changes. It's also really useful to test new APIs or quickly create a bunch of file/requests for the current project. I use PHP on my landing page[1] so I can make changes and publish them immediately without any build step. This way, whenever…

I've just learned about this extension today from a Twitch stream. First I thought: "Nice, another great IntelliJ IDEA feature got ported to VSCode" (I think the syntax is exactly the same). But seeing the VSCode extension was first released in 2016, it looks as if JetBrains actually copied this one. Always nice to see how IDEs/editors inspire each other.

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

#473

Post by doomjunky »

JIT compiling

Just in time compiling means, you can modifiy your programm at runtime. I had wasted so much time in the implement-compile-run-debug-repeat cicle. Just the naviagtion to the part i want to debug had me cost a lot of time. With JIT you can implement and debug at the same time. Debugging every single change and seeing the effects helped me to avoid a lot of bugs.

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

#474

Post by kortex »

vulcan01 wrote: post #455
kortex wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Used to love Python. Now, unless it has type hints, not so much. Used to hate static types, or at least I thought I did. Really, I just hated C++ and Java. Go is Bae, trying to learn some rust. Computers are rigid. The more rigid the lang you talk to them, the less you get bitten. Untyped python, bash, javascript, just not worth it imho.

It's not exactly what you're looking for, but have you checked out mypy[1]? It is basically static typing for python. [1] https://pypi.org/project/mypy/

That's what I meant with "unless it has type hints" but thanks for the link :)

Blue ocean python I pretty much start with hints and interface definitions, the logic follows. Helps me through writing the logic when I have autocompletion of methods.

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

#475

Post by bruh2 »

war1025 wrote: post #236
dceddia wrote: post #27

A couple others have mentioned shell tricks. One of my favorites is using Alt-. (in Bash and Zsh) to insert the last argument of the previous command. Press it multiple times and it will cycle through the last argument of all previous commands. It's great for when you want to, say, `ls thing` and then `vim thing`. Yesterday I went looking for a similar key that would insert a copy of the last argument on the current…

One of my favorite bash tricks is that I have this alias in my bashrc file: function goto { cd -P ~/.links/"$1"; } And then in the `.links` folder I have symbolic links to directories I need to go to often. Then getting to a frequently used directory is just a `goto X` away.

Ooh, that's cool. You might be interested at z[1]. It kinda fills the same purpose as your trick, except it automatically figures out what are your most used directories by tracking your shell navigation or something.

[1] https://github.com/rupa/z/wiki

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

#477

Post by ooyimusic »

thoughtstile wrote: post #316
jokab wrote: post #81

Obs studio. I record myself while coding anything. I pretend to be a bigshot coding streaming sensation (even if its just for me). Its fun as well as very helpful in so many ways. 1. It helps me stay focus on the task at hand. One recording for each task 2. It lets me practice how to articulate stuffs. Its like blogging but ephemeral (because i wont upload this) 3. It helps me get motivated. Cant let my "thousands" o…

Alternatively, if you don't care about having an audience, you can just do private livestreams directly to YouTube via OBS. After your stream is concluded, it saves the livestream as a VOD. With this method, you don't have to worry about storing large video files when recording yourself. Also, because it's YouTube, you inherit all of the benefits YouTube provides. You get the added benefit of having closed captioning…

https://youtu.be/rXBaRwX5BPY

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

#478

Post by detaro »

kqr wrote: post #467
detaro wrote: post #401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As always, it depends on what you do. On your machines, sure. On customer machines, no, quickly installing a VCS and pulling some repository is often not an option.

I truly pity the developer that has to create software (a) on customer machines and (b) without VCS and pulling repositories.

It's not just creating, but also debugging, configuring, ... I'm not even sure git runs on some of the systems I work with.

And yes, some environments take a very dim view on you pulling repositories from outside their internal systems.

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

#479

Post by tren »

jikciraz wrote: post #376
Joeri wrote: post #360

The things I've benefited from most are not tools but practices. - Question the work Always be questioning whether the thing you're doing really needs to be done. Is there a way to not do it? Is there a way to do something better instead? - Park downhill Before putting a project or incomplete task away, make notes of what the next thing was that you were going to work on. This lets you bypass that 10 minute orientati…

Regarding the todo list, I find that having a text-format todo list for the current day can provide structure and sense of accomplishment (especially at the end of the day). After completing a task I would put a checkmark emoji in front of it. Such a list can also bring me back on track after a lunch or a mentally-demanding task. If I know that I won't be able to do a certain task today, I put it in advance for the n…

I like taskade to manage this. I'll use the weekly Todo list template and it works well

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

#480

Post by bhelkey »

jasonpeacock wrote: post #49
growlist wrote: post #37

Learn to touch-type properly. I'm not a shit hot typist or anything, but it does make hours on a keyboard more pleasant. And (hate me) I do judge other devs on it. If someone can't be bothered to invest a few tens of hours on such a key productivity enhancement then what does that say?

I've using this site for improving my touch-typing: https://www.keybr.com/ Slow is smooth, smooth is fast.

I am unimpressed with this site. It seems to use a large number of made up words (risittle, ...). The words it chooses can even be one letter off of a common word (itsell -> itself).
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