Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

561–570 of 574 posts

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

#561

Post by actinium226 »

adamzen wrote: post #484
Quekid5 wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but "side effects" != mutation. Also: The level of control offered by Rust comes at a steep cost compared to GC'd languages.

I am relatively new to rust, but motivated to learn it right now. Could you elaborate on what the cost compared to garbage collected languages is?

I think he means two things, mind you I'm not very familiar with Rust, but I've done a lot of safety-critical C/C++, which is sort of like Rust

1. There's a mental cost on the programmer. You have to learn all the ins and outs of things like the "borrow checker" (a Rust concept) and it's on you to understand the rules and how to use them

2. It can slow down compile time. As your program gets bigger, the compiler is doing more work to check that it's valid code, so that will slow you down.

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

#562

Post by actinium226 »

TeeMassive wrote: post #191
actinium226 wrote: post #57

Not a program, but the concept of functional programming and pure functions. It makes it a lot easier to think about code, and also makes it easier to test and parallelize code. Although be warned, it can also have the "side-effect" (functional programming pun!) of making you somewhat insufferable as you try to convince everyone around you that functional programming is amazing.

At my job I was introduced to functional programming with Python with strong typing. I was at first rushing implementing ~50 business rules (which changed weekly) on the setup of a system. Then this functional wise kid came along and we did in one week what took me 5 weeks. Along with that, using MQTT to separate your program with Protobuf makes everything so much easier. Program crashes? Let it burn and let systemd…

Nice, so 4 weeks saved at, what, 40-60 hours per week? So 160-240 hours saved! And you're just getting started!

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

#563

Post by websap »

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…

GoLand and IntelliJ are truly remarkable pieces of software. I try using VSCode with official Go extension every few months and always come back to GoLand.

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

#565

Post by linsomniac »

linsomniac wrote: post #365
orthecreedence wrote: post #7

Vim. I can never leave modal editing now. Been using it since 2010 and I think in vim when editing. It lets me enter a flow state so much easier. My brain maps into writing and editing.

Since 2010? Welcome new vi user. :-)

My point in saying this was, just to clarify: vi is an ancient technology that still feels cutting edge. I can't imagine editing without modal, it enables some fantastic workflows, which I wish I had in other contexts as well.

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

#566

Post by Quekid5 »

adamzen wrote: post #484
Quekid5 wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but "side effects" != mutation. Also: The level of control offered by Rust comes at a steep cost compared to GC'd languages.

I am relatively new to rust, but motivated to learn it right now. Could you elaborate on what the cost compared to garbage collected languages is?

I was mostly thinking of the #1 mentioned by actinium226 in a sibling post, fwiw.

The main other thing I was thinking of was that GC languages sometimes have features that are very hard to support sensibly in non-GC languages: My favorite example is the higher-kinded types (HKT) which e.g. Scala and Haskell support. These can incidentally be used to "tame" side effects in a very principled way (via Monads). Another example would be lazy computation/values.

(Other applications of HKTs are validation integrated with parsing while still providing the maximum actionable feedback to users.)

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

#567

Post by foxandmouse »

mastersummoner wrote: post #200

Not a program, but being very familiar with the keyboard shortcuts in SublimeText has saved me countless hours of dev time. Things like Ctrl-D to highlight multiple instances of a word, plus the ability to put on Caps checking in the search bar first so you're only highlighting correctly capitalized versions. Make the same change in multiple locations. Saves so much time. Knowing how to highlight a letter, a word, a…

when switching to vscode, I thought it would be a good idea to use the VScode shortcuts, I wish I took the time to customize it to match sublime. They are so much more intuitive. It just feels right, if that makes any sense.

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

#568

Post by r14n »

amrtn wrote: post #247
geocrasher wrote: post #85

Ditto Clipboard Manager for Windows. Yes, I know W10/11 have it native now, but it's not as good as Ditto. https://ditto-cp.sourceforge.io/ AutoHotKey https://www.autohotkey.com/ And if deleting TikTok from my phone were an app, it would be nominated, because that saved me hundreds of hours I'm sure :D

I loved ditto when I used windows. Do you know a good ditto alternative for mac?

I have been using https://github.com/Clipy/Clipy

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

#569

Post by gala8y »

thiht wrote: post #517
gala8y wrote: post #508

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No root required? I thought TV's didn't allow side loading anything. TIL.

No root required! The installation process is a bit annoying, but updates work great.

That's great, it's a totally different thing to suggest to someone to sideload vs. to root.

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

#570

Post by wearyghost »

lolive wrote: post #530
shortlived wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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]

ScreenToGif is pretty simple! I often use it at work, and find that it serves the purpose of sharing short snippets perfectly
Post reply on HN