Use DuckDuckGo as your default search engine. It answers your code questions inline! It seems to do this by scraping the first accepted answer from the first stackoverflow post match to your query.
Ask HN: What are the cool life hacks for Developer?
51–60 of 70 posts
Re: Ask HN: What are the cool life hacks for Developer?
#52AutoHotKey: if you're on windows like me (and starting to feel in the minority on here), this is a must. I've been evangelising AHK for the last 7 years at least, to anyone who will listen. It has saved me days of my life in accumulated time. Here are a few samples of things from my main script which I use daily CTRL+@ - paste my email address. saves buckets of time logging into things, signing up to things etc ]t -…
interesting. Useful tools
Re: Ask HN: What are the cool life hacks for Developer?
#53If 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.
Someone on HN mentioned (or even built) http://mdn.io for that, so you can just type mdn.io/array into the address bar and it takes you straight to the right JS docs page.
Bonus: works in every browser or environment.
Re: Ask HN: What are the cool life hacks for Developer?
#54Use Workflowy to manage everything in your life that needs to be in a list (https://workflowy.com/)
If you are on Chrome, use Tabs Outliner to manage your tabs (https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/tabs-outliner/eggk...)
Re: Ask HN: What are the cool life hacks for Developer?
#55Having worked mostly on refactoring projects in the last few years, I've learned that too many projects end up in the gutter because "that's just the way it is" was the mindset of too many developers working on them when they faced resistance like tight deadlines or faced with spaghetti code they didn't want to deal with.
Applying to real-life, this means making excuses for goals or habits you want to achieve, instead of finding clever solutions to meet them.
Example: you want to develop a habit of listening to podcasts or audiobooks. But excuses like "I don't have a commute with dead time to listen to them" or "I can't focus if I listen to while I work" pop up. You could just say to yourself "that's just the way it is" and not bother developing the habit. Or you can push through the resistance, get creative and figure out other ways to make the time for the habit. Personally as I don't have a commute to work and can't listen while I work, I listen in pockets of time like when I'm in the shower or going in-between meetings.
Re: Ask HN: What are the cool life hacks for Developer?
#56Nobody 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 g…
or 'meet men', if you happen to BE a woman, and / or are not into women. While I appreciate that finding a partner in life is very important, I don't know if it really falls under the umbrella of "developer life hack".
What they are saying doesn't have anything to do with romance.
Re: Ask HN: What are the cool life hacks for Developer?
#57Haven't really got some myself, but I read this article a while a go https://github.com/NARKOZ/hacker-scripts . This guy's script to make coffee is pure genious ;-)
Thanks for the link! I've seen this before but couldn't remember where!
Re: Ask HN: What are the cool life hacks for Developer?
#58Automate your job. I'm steadily building tools that make my job easier and thus me more efficient. I have a nice django app scaffolding generator that makes writing code quicker. I just need to add the model fields and the logic to the views. Everything else is mostly generated. In fact, I'm moving towards automating a lot of the code I write. Less strain on my hands.
Would you mind sharing the github repo?
Re: Ask HN: What are the cool life hacks for Developer?
#59Use a clipboard manager. I wish I'd started this a lot earlier in life. The amount of times you need the second last thing you copied is surprising. I went through a few before I settled on Ditto, which works over remote desktop too.
ArsClip[1] for Windows is a fantastic free tool to track clipboard history.
Re: Ask HN: What are the cool life hacks for Developer?
#60Use Workflowy to manage everything in your life that needs to be in a list ( https://workflowy.com/ ) If you are on Chrome, use Tabs Outliner to manage your tabs ( https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/tabs-outliner/eggk... )
Workflowy is awesome. Kind of like Org-mode for the web.