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Ask HN: What are the cool life hacks for Developer?

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Re: Ask HN: What are the cool life hacks for Developer?

#31

Post by gabemart »

If you're not already, use browser shortcuts when you know where you want to go.

A few weeks ago I read about an American civilian pilot who was out on a training flight and by chance ran into the Japanese air fleet over Pearl Harbour - becoming one of the first Americans to learn of the imminent attack. I don't remember any details beyond that. If I wanted to read about that pilot on wikipedia, I guess I could navigate to Google.com, enter some relevant search terms, scroll through the results until I find one from Wikipedia that looks right, click on on, read it, see if it's the correct one, etc.

But because I search for wikipedia articles about stuff all the time, I have a chrome shortcut set up that does a Google "I'm feeling lucky" search with "inurl:en.wikipedia" appended to it, so I just type in my browser bar

    w civilian pilot first to see japanese air fleet
and hit enter, and it takes me straight to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornelia_Fort

Once you get used to going straight to where you want to go, using the "search and choose" method becomes painfully frustrating

Edit: to be more clear, I have a chrome "custom search engine" set up with the keyword "w" and url:

    http://www.google.com/search?ie=UTF-8&q=inurl:en.wikipedia %s&btnI=745
this obviously routes your wikipedia navigation through google, which some people may have a privacy issue with, but I don't when it's something I would search google for anyway

Re: Ask HN: What are the cool life hacks for Developer?

#32

Post by floSchr »

wingerlang wrote: post #16

Automation. My number one thing might be learning to use multiple cursors in Sublime, I probably jump into it 10 times a day to psuedo-automate text editing. I wrote of one example here: http://jontelang.com/blog/2016/06/22/sublime-efficiency.html Another thing is, also automation, to use Hazel to automatically keep my temp files manageable. Basically, when I file is older than X days, move it to a "need review" fold…

Yes! I use a similar hazel workflow for screenshots. I save all Screenshots to ~/Pictures/Screenshots Screenshots older than 1 days get moved into a ./.old directory Screenshots older than 1 week in that backup directory get deleted.

Workflow: http://jmp.sh/QAEQSep

Re: Ask HN: What are the cool life hacks for Developer?

#33

Post by andretti1977 »

I do love bushcraft! I'm especially passionated with fire-starting techniques and adore to practice them in the woods, but when i can't go outside i watch a lot of youtube related videos.

I had also started a small website (http://bushcraftvideos.woodsandrocks.com/) to "collect" the best of them a few months ago but i'm facing a "break" due to work and personal commitments.

Starting a fire (small and safely) in the nature using a knife and a firesteel is an inspirational experience!

Re: Ask HN: What are the cool life hacks for Developer?

#34

Post by copperx »

dreeves wrote: post #21
copperx wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Beeminder sounds like a great idea, but there's something stopping me from using it. Every time I try to set a new goal on Beeminder just before I set the dollar amount I hear myself say "this is really stupid" and promptly cancel. I know that if I feel guilty about paying those $5 per transgression I can just lie to the app, which makes the whole thing pointless. I understand that the whole idea is to be honest to y…

(I'm a Beeminder cofounder) This is good feedback; thank you! We're mostly ok with targeting the particular psychology that this kind of thing works for (our very self-serving characterization thereof: http://blog.beeminder.com/typebee ) but what about adding enough social accountability that you wouldn't cheat? We don't have many social features but you can just point some friends/family at the url of your Beeminder…

Thank you for your reply.

I think social accountability would only work if (1) someone else could tell whether I'm cheating (that's not happening in a personal project) and (2) cares enough to check my graph.

Maybe my cheapness trumps my integrity. Or more positively, I reframe the meaning of the price: what does $5 buy me in Beeminder? an accurate data point. Is $5 worth an accurate data point? depends on what I'm planning on doing with the data later. And because I don't know what I want to do with the data, an accurate data point doesn't seem very valuable.

That's really unfair, though. I know that losing those $5 eventually will coax me into complying, but my inner Hyde will convince me to lie. Sigh.

I guess I just don't fall into the target niche (although it really looks like I do—except for the cheapness-trumping-integrity issue).

Re: Ask HN: What are the cool life hacks for Developer?

#35

Post by puzzles »

cyberferret wrote: post #26

Have another, totally unrelated to coding (or even computer) passion nearby to your work desk that you can go to in order to reboot your brain from time to time. I have my collection of guitars behind my work desk, and every time I am waiting for a download or process to run, I force myself to NOT just open another browser tab for Facebook/Youtube or revisit my emails and instead reach for an instrument and take my b…

Great advice. I started building quadcopters recently, and it's been great to combine technology with 'manual labor'. I've never been into DIY stuff before, but it's tons of fun!

Re: Ask HN: What are the cool life hacks for Developer?

#36

Post by brynedwards »

gabemart wrote: post #31

If you're not already, use browser shortcuts when you know where you want to go. A few weeks ago I read about an American civilian pilot who was out on a training flight and by chance ran into the Japanese air fleet over Pearl Harbour - becoming one of the first Americans to learn of the imminent attack. I don't remember any details beyond that. If I wanted to read about that pilot on wikipedia, I guess I could navig…

Interesting idea. Also, DuckDuckGo can do the same:

  https://duckduckgo.com/?q=%21ducky+inurl%3Aen.wikipedia+%s
I also use Google's "I'm feeling lucky" as my default search so I can type e.g. "mdn array" to look up the JS array docs quickly. I used to use DuckDuckGo's version but the results were unfortunately too inaccurate.

Re: Ask HN: What are the cool life hacks for Developer?

#37

Post by singingfish »

cyberferret wrote: post #26

Have another, totally unrelated to coding (or even computer) passion nearby to your work desk that you can go to in order to reboot your brain from time to time. I have my collection of guitars behind my work desk, and every time I am waiting for a download or process to run, I force myself to NOT just open another browser tab for Facebook/Youtube or revisit my emails and instead reach for an instrument and take my b…

At one point I was picking up my soprano sax during test runs on a regular basis. Doesn't work so well in an open plan office mind you :)

Re: Ask HN: What are the cool life hacks for Developer?

#38

Post by notalaser »

singingfish wrote: post #37
cyberferret wrote: post #26

Have another, totally unrelated to coding (or even computer) passion nearby to your work desk that you can go to in order to reboot your brain from time to time. I have my collection of guitars behind my work desk, and every time I am waiting for a download or process to run, I force myself to NOT just open another browser tab for Facebook/Youtube or revisit my emails and instead reach for an instrument and take my b…

At one point I was picking up my soprano sax during test runs on a regular basis. Doesn't work so well in an open plan office mind you :)

Nothing works very well in an open plan office :-).

Re: Ask HN: What are the cool life hacks for Developer?

#39

Post by greenspot »

Nobody mentions 'meet women' [1]. Maybe too simple but from my perspective an important part in this equation.

Meeting women is a bit like doing sales. it's more of an outgoing activity and being extrovert. So rather the contrary of coding. This is refreshing, gives me balance and a nice change to my day to day life as a coder.

[1] For the sake of verbal simplicity, I use the term 'women' for people of the opposite gender or the gender you are into. And also for the sake of simplicity and decency, I use 'meet' for all kind of interactions.

Re: Ask HN: What are the cool life hacks for Developer?

#40

Post by markatkinson »

puzzles wrote: post #35
cyberferret wrote: post #26

Have another, totally unrelated to coding (or even computer) passion nearby to your work desk that you can go to in order to reboot your brain from time to time. I have my collection of guitars behind my work desk, and every time I am waiting for a download or process to run, I force myself to NOT just open another browser tab for Facebook/Youtube or revisit my emails and instead reach for an instrument and take my b…

Great advice. I started building quadcopters recently, and it's been great to combine technology with 'manual labor'. I've never been into DIY stuff before, but it's tons of fun!

That sounds awesome. I started indoor climbing... nothing like coming back to your keyboard and you can't feel your fingers.

Although this doesn't really work for a quick 15 minute break, and only if there is a climbing gym/wall nearby.

Otherwise Ukulele!

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