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Productivity Tips for Programmers

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11–17 of 17 posts

Re: Productivity Tips for Programmers

#11
post #10
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi, I agree with you that these points are basic, but at times we forget the very basic stuff and miss out things there.. Totally agree with your 4th point. Unless you actually write code, nothing will help you..

You have to write code at some point, but you also have to think about what you are doing. Especially in time-constraints environments, there is a big risk doing a lot of code which ends up totally useless because it was not well thought, and did not do what was intended, etc... More important than unit test and all that trivial stuff, what matters a lot in my experience is the ability to write for changes. That's re…

@cdavid agree with you on forward thinking.

Don't agree on Unit test being trivial. Infact, it is one of the things that aid you with changing specs and code. It helps you change your code with confidence. That really matters.

I appreciate your overall point, had just one correction. thanks.

Re: Productivity Tips for Programmers

#12
post #5

While it was well written, and with best intentions, I don't think there is any real significant "tips" to increase "productivity". All things aside these are just some best practices sprinkled with some examples. This is similar to when your parents tell you to brush your teeth and floss daily. I haven't been programming a lot but here are some ideas that I've found, in similar vein to the parent article. 1. Watch B…

Great points. I even wrote a little script that blocks sites I commonly visit that prevent me from getting work done. It's called get-shit-done: http://github.com/leftnode/get-shit-done

Re: Productivity Tips for Programmers

#14
post #11
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have to write code at some point, but you also have to think about what you are doing. Especially in time-constraints environments, there is a big risk doing a lot of code which ends up totally useless because it was not well thought, and did not do what was intended, etc... More important than unit test and all that trivial stuff, what matters a lot in my experience is the ability to write for changes. That's re…

@cdavid agree with you on forward thinking. Don't agree on Unit test being trivial. Infact, it is one of the things that aid you with changing specs and code. It helps you change your code with confidence. That really matters. I appreciate your overall point, had just one correction. thanks.

I should have explained what I mean by trivial: I think any competent programmer knows the value of testing. So in that sense saying that you should write tests is like saying you should write good code - it is true, but not very insightful.

In a time constraint environment, you often need to make a choice between more tests and more features, etc... I have seen a lot of people who said their code was great because it was well tested, but then the tests depend so much on the implementation that it actually goes against better code (since refactoring may mean breaking a lot of unit tests). So the more interesting question is: what to test, how, and how far. For example, my own rule for testing is that in general, I don't test something if testing it takes more code than the feature itself (except for regression testing, and things which really play well with testing, like parsers and the likes, and code which needs to run on many different platforms).

It is also useful to recognize when testing has value, and to avoid overestimating its actual benefits. Too often, people don't really think about failures when testing, or how the API it exercices can be used in a straightforward manner or not. For example, I don't get so much the value of TDD - I find it much more useful to think in terms of API usecases, for which small tests are often not well suited. Sure, designing for easy testing can help, but you can get the same benefit without TDD in my opinion.

Finally, too often, I see "this library is well tested" sold as a feature in open source projects - but test coverage is not a feature. Sure, everything else being equal, I would prefer a well tested library to a not well tested library. But everything else is not equal: there is a constant tradeoff between designing better API, getting a better documentation or installation process and testing.

Re: Productivity Tips for Programmers

#15
post #5

While it was well written, and with best intentions, I don't think there is any real significant "tips" to increase "productivity". All things aside these are just some best practices sprinkled with some examples. This is similar to when your parents tell you to brush your teeth and floss daily. I haven't been programming a lot but here are some ideas that I've found, in similar vein to the parent article. 1. Watch B…

Great points. I even wrote a little script that blocks sites I commonly visit that prevent me from getting work done. It's called get-shit-done: http://github.com/leftnode/get-shit-done

Have you considered using these extensions:

https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/laankejkbhbdhmip...

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/4476/

Re: Productivity Tips for Programmers

#16
post #5

While it was well written, and with best intentions, I don't think there is any real significant "tips" to increase "productivity". All things aside these are just some best practices sprinkled with some examples. This is similar to when your parents tell you to brush your teeth and floss daily. I haven't been programming a lot but here are some ideas that I've found, in similar vein to the parent article. 1. Watch B…

One thing I'd add to the to the list is have someone to talk to. When building large systems it's always important to have the big picture in mind, and being able to get another person's input on what you're doing can often be invaluable. I've saved hours upon hours of time from stupid mistakes just by spending thirty seconds to get another perspective.

Absolutely, even if that person is just there to listen.

I often find that just the process of explaining a problem with spoken words forces me to think about it in a different way. Sometimes I even talk through a problem with my non-programmer girlfriend. She's nice enough to listen, but doesn't really understand what I am talking about. It just doesn't really matter though because often I don't need another persons perspective I just need to talk through the problem which allows me to come up with a different angle of attack.

Re: Productivity Tips for Programmers

#17
post #5

While it was well written, and with best intentions, I don't think there is any real significant "tips" to increase "productivity". All things aside these are just some best practices sprinkled with some examples. This is similar to when your parents tell you to brush your teeth and floss daily. I haven't been programming a lot but here are some ideas that I've found, in similar vein to the parent article. 1. Watch B…

I don't know about you all, but for me, any productivity problems I have are strictly dominated by laziness, lack of motivation, and being easily distracted.

Even when I'm in the zone and getting shit done, my actual editing ability and low-level coding skills are never the bottleneck - I spend most my time strategizing. Actually banging out the code is trivial, but that seems to be what most people on HN fetishize...

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