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Ask HN: Programs that saved you 100 hours? (2022 edition)

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Re: Ask HN: Programs that saved you 100 hours? (2022 edition)

#521

Post by jyounker »

dougdonohoe wrote: post #159

Gotta say IntelliJ, which isn't just for Java. It's a great coding platform and I used it for Scala, Go, Python, Bash, Java, PHP, Perl, you name it. I know many people like to hate on IDEs, but IntelliJ (and/or its language-specific variants like PyCharm or GoLand) has great support for all the debuggers in the above languages. It has awesome search/replace. Being able to "drill down" in to code, including 3rd party…

To add to the point above, it's worth understanding that IntelliJ is not an editor. It's a refactoring engine with a very nice structured editor, and the key to using it effectively is to use the higher-level features that it provides.

If you're not using the refactoring tooling then you won't understand why many people love it so much.

[It's worth looking under the hood at the plugin APIs. The editor doesn't work on text files. It works on ASTs.]

Re: Ask HN: Programs that saved you 100 hours? (2022 edition)

#522

Post by aabbcc1241 »

* text-based ERD diagram: https://quick-erd.surge.sh with cli to auto generate incremental knex migrations

* array-like proxy-based ORM: https://www.npmjs.com/package/better-sqlite3-proxy the schema and typescript definition can be generated from erd text in above format

* a composible and typescript-friendly json parser for data validation: https://www.npmjs.com/package/cast.ts

I'm not sure if they save 100 hours but they're definitely timer savers for me as an educator that need to create lots of web projects frequently.

Re: Ask HN: Programs that saved you 100 hours? (2022 edition)

#523

Post by yanokwa »

chungy wrote: post #189
yanokwa wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've switched from Mosh to Eternal Terminal ( https://eternalterminal.dev ) because of its excellent native scrolling support.

Eternal Terminal pitches itself as entirely superior to Mosh, but also describes itself as using TCP (Mosh uses UDP). I'm curious how that can actually cover the use cases Mosh provides? Mosh using UDP means that as a connectionless protocol, your end points can move (eg: from WiFi to LTE, or vice-versa), and beyond a small hiccup, your connections remain alive and well.

ET adds a layer between application and TCP sockets that persists connections. https://eternalterminal.dev/howitworks has more.

If you are mostly on unreliable and high-latency connections, mosh will likely feel better, but with no native scrollback.

Re: Ask HN: Programs that saved you 100 hours? (2022 edition)

#524

Post by tinodb »

mainedotpy wrote: post #92

Espanso [0] - such a useful text expander with easy inclusion of shell commands and many other features. I love this thing so much as someone in the medical field that I made my first ever open source contribution to it. 0: https://espanso.org

I really enjoy espanso too! I only have a handful of expansions that I use (date, reverse date, may email address, our domain) but it is already so nice. I should add some things :)

Re: Ask HN: Programs that saved you 100 hours? (2022 edition)

#525

Post by jen729w »

jodrellblank wrote: post #483
jen729w wrote: post #476

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know I should learn it but, I dunno, I just really dislike the PowerShell syntax. I get what they were going for with the Verb-Noun thing but it just reminds me of AppleScript and I can’t stand it.

You don't have to learn or use PowerShell to paste something into the ISE editor and go to 'Edit -> Replace in Script' and do a regex search/replace.

Ahaaa cool tip, that will be useful one day. Thank you.

Re: Ask HN: Programs that saved you 100 hours? (2022 edition)

#526

Post by thomasswilliams »

Great question, have enjoyed reading answers. For me, a clipboard manager has easily saved me 100+ hours of work time (I use CLCL and Clipy). A close second was upgrading my hardware - image editing which previously took minutes on my 2014-era machine now takes seconds.

Re: Ask HN: Programs that saved you 100 hours? (2022 edition)

#527

Post by mattmanser »

stackbutterflow wrote: post #288
ivanjermakov wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've tried to migrate to something more lightweight like (neo)?vim, Helix, emacs; but regardless of how good their syntax awareness/LSP support is, it's always inferior to JetBrains IDEs. Simple example: (any language, e.g. Rust) rename a function across multiple files and undo it. Let me know how you'd do it in your editor of choice.

That's the go-to example whenever IDEs are discussed on HN but I...almost never do that? I don't think I can count on two hands the number of times I have to do that in a year. As for undoing it I don't think I've ever done it at all. Anyway it doesn't matter because vim + CoC can do it. And for undoing it I guess I simply rename it back to the original name. Actually I just tried and yeah, it works. One of these day…

I do it all the time. That's the thing, once you can do it without hassle, you do it. Regular scenarios:

1. Refactoring

2. You are experimentally coding and changing names of methods and variables as you realize you need to split stuff up

3. One of your colleagues can't name stuff for shit

The IDE I use makes it so easy it's just a thing I do without even thinking about it.

Another great thing is just highlighting some code and with a simple keypress extracting that code to a new method, with the right return type, params, etc. all done automatically. Not quite right? Highlighted the wrong rows? Press ctrl-z.

Re: Ask HN: Programs that saved you 100 hours? (2022 edition)

#528

Post by tasuki »

patrick451 wrote: post #516
tasuki wrote: post #493

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If I ran around talking up the zen of single letter variables, my team would shoo me out of the room, and almost nobody on HN would applaud me for it. Yes, because single letter variables are bad. > But for some reason, functional programming tends to get a pass, despite it just not clicking for a large swath of team mates. Perhaps this is a problem with the team mates rather than with functional programming? I'm t…

If you and half your team a not smart of enough for functional programming, along what dimensions is it clearly superior? Just like with single letter variables that only make sense to the author, if functional design only makes sense to one or two people on a team of many, it's clearly inferior.

Functional programming is superior because it leads to more correct programs. Classes of bugs become impossible. With dependent typing, you can prove even more about your programs and mathematically guarantee they're behaving to spec.

Instead, we as an industry choose JavaScript and endless runtime errors, because we don't care about the occasional blowups. We want to move fast, break things, and not have to learn maths.

Note the current state makes business sense: quick and cheap and who cares whether it works well, we'll throw it away soon anyway.

Re: Ask HN: Programs that saved you 100 hours? (2022 edition)

#529

Post by lolive »

porridgeandrice wrote: post #126

Autohotkey There is simply no better automation program on any OS. I even run a fully fledged tiling wm written in autohotkey. ( For reference, here's when I tricked r/unixporn into thinking it was bspwm https://www.reddit.com/r/unixporn/comments/nhzz3b/confession... ) Fluent search Spotlight on steroids, for windows. Apart from being a search/launcher, it has a bunch of atrociously good features. It lets you use a c…

Which Autohotkey script do you use for tiling wm on Windows? bug.n? komorebi?

Re: Ask HN: Programs that saved you 100 hours? (2022 edition)

#530

Post by lolive »

shortlived wrote: post #110
AH4oFVbPT4f8 wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you find greenshot better than say ShareX ?

IMO yes. ShareX had too many options, and too many layers to navigate to get something done.

Greenshot is my friend everyday.

But I now want a tool as simple as it, but for animated GIF.

[Any piece of advice is welcome]

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