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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?

#61

Post by junto »

joegreen wrote: post #20
nanospeck wrote: post #18

Start asking questions in Stack Overflow. I wish I started doing this years ago. I used to be just a non participating reader for a long time. Once I got the taste of it, I ask questions frequently now. If you are stuck with an issue for over 2 hrs, ask in SO. There are so many knowledgeable people who will guide you to in the right path and save you hours/days! The best part is you'll get a response when you are bac…

Well, I don't have similar experiences with SO. Sometimes I feel that easy questions are being answered very quickly by many people because everyone wants to get reputation points quickly, but difficult questions are often left unanswered forever as they require a lot of effort and don't bring as much reputation to the answerer (as their potential audience is not so wide).

That's what the bounties are for.

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

#62

Post by muflax »

aculver wrote: post #5

Being a developer is a certified superpower, so it's fair to expect that some of the life hacks unlocked by being a developer are on a life changing scale. Here's my recommendation: Build a machine that prints money. Find a problem that regular business computer users are solving with some combination of raw effort and a spreadsheet to keep track. Write an app that accomplishes the same thing, but better, and in a mo…

How do you discover problems that regular people have?

Especially because what most businesses actually do on a daily basis, and what annoying problems they have, is totally invisible to me.

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

#63

Post by [deleted] »

greenspot wrote: post #39

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 g…

[deleted]

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

#64

Post by wetwiper »

greenspot wrote: post #39

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 g…

I think the idea is rather: get up off your chair, move away from your screen, and interact with other people. Or dont interact (your choice), but do something that takes your mind off a problem and simultaneously off the "work" aspect.

More to the point (at least in my case) is to ensure that your priorities remain ordered correctly. Basically, ensure that you spend sufficient time with family, friends or others, and make time for hobbies that don't involve code. Time management is important in this regard... committed to providing 8 hours a day? Stick strictly to that. Your own personal project? Define a time restriction on the hours spent on that project, and keep strictly to it. You soon realize how much time those distractions during the day take up. By reducing those, your productivity increases. But importantly, relationships become stronger and those hobbies help expand your mind. Both are extremely beneficial to you and your growth as a developer...

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

#65

Post by asimuvPR »

bkovacev wrote: post #58
asimuvPR wrote: post #11

Automate 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?

I'm in the process of automating some tools. They should be out soon. I'll make sure to do a Show HN post for people like you who are interested. :)

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

#66

Post by roryisok »

slashdotdash wrote: post #59
roryisok wrote: post #3

Use 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. [1] http://www.joejoesoft.com/vcms/97/

That was one of the first I tried, but I think it didn't work across RDP

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

#67

Post by roryisok »

Artoemius wrote: post #54

Use 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 a great tool, but I had to give it up because I spent half my day curating lists instead of working ;-)

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

#68

Post by irunbackwards »

roryisok wrote: post #49

AutoHotKey: 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 -…

Love Chocolatey, also Synergy+ is awesome, especially since it's cross platform.

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

#69

Post by bkovacev »

asimuvPR wrote: post #65
bkovacev wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you mind sharing the github repo?

I'm in the process of automating some tools. They should be out soon. I'll make sure to do a Show HN post for people like you who are interested. :)

Please let me know :) I'd love to see it and play around with those tools, they'll cut my work time tremendously. Thank you!

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

#70

Post by nanospeck »

junto wrote: post #61
joegreen wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, I don't have similar experiences with SO. Sometimes I feel that easy questions are being answered very quickly by many people because everyone wants to get reputation points quickly, but difficult questions are often left unanswered forever as they require a lot of effort and don't bring as much reputation to the answerer (as their potential audience is not so wide).

That's what the bounties are for.

Yes for questions with very less audience, you can offer a a bounty after a limited duration (3 days if I remember). You will have to give away your points as bounty. If you do not have enough points to give away, sign-up on other Stack Overflow affiliate sites that give you 100 point for every sign-up. And give it out as bounty.
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