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Ask HN: What are your favorite developer-efficiency tips?

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Re: Ask HN: What are your favorite developer-efficiency tips?

#361

Post by RBerenguel »

maerF0x0 wrote: post #148
growlist wrote: post #37

Learn to touch-type properly. I'm not a shit hot typist or anything, but it does make hours on a keyboard more pleasant. And (hate me) I do judge other devs on it. If someone can't be bothered to invest a few tens of hours on such a key productivity enhancement then what does that say?

I'd love to subthread hear from people if alternate keyboard layouts have made a difference. ?

Moved to Colemak and learnt touch typing on it directly (to take advantage of the mental break). Really improved my "writing feeling", solved some nagging RSI issues and in general helped in "well-being". I don't type particularly fast, but I type way smoother, which is what feels good. I can't recommend Colemak enough, although I have never convinced anyone (in around 3 years).

Re: Ask HN: What are your favorite developer-efficiency tips?

#362

Post by blackrock »

georgewsinger wrote: post #279

Programming in VR Desktop: https://github.com/SimulaVR/Simula (see the README for a link to a video of it in action). This allows you to (i) distribute your work tasks intuitively across space; (ii) completely zap out all distractions within a VR headset; (iii) completely eliminate the mouse and work 100% on a keyboard (VR Desktop allows you to click and browse with eye gaze). It takes a bit of practice to learn the…

I was imagining something like this for fully immersive computer work. Especially for development and research.

It can give you infinite screens.

One better idea, would be to tie in VR with some front cameras, and then overlay your windows and documents at specific spots in your room.

Like have your calendar on the wall. It becomes literally, a wall calendar.

Then a todo list on your desk. Some encyclopedias on your bookshelf. Etc.

This way, your working documents becomes grounded in your actual physical reality. And this gives you memory, of where that document was.

It’s like how my desk may be messy, but to me it’s perfectly organized. I know exactly where that receipt was placed, in that pile of papers in the far corner of the table.

Being able to recognize hand movements is also a plus, as this will make it easier to interact and manipulate your virtual objects.

Re: Ask HN: What are your favorite developer-efficiency tips?

#363

Post by growlist »

spire2985 wrote: post #108
growlist wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you mind sharing the model? I tried using my Hisense but it wouldn't work. And I've read that TVs won't always work properly as monitors, but then obviously there's a much wider and cheaper choice of TV panels than dedicated monitors.

2x of these: Samsung UN40KU6290FXZA You are aiming for something that supports both 4K (3840x2160) [or greater I suppose] and a 60Hz refresh rate in that mode. On cheaper models this can be found on a HDMI2.0 input. More expensive ones might have DisplayPort as an option. Shop around during TV season and you can find a quality model for $200/ea.

Thanks! Next question is whether I need a new graphics card.

Re: Ask HN: What are your favorite developer-efficiency tips?

#364

Post by rhlsthrm »

XCSme wrote: post #59

The REST Client VSCode extension[0] let's you send HTTP request from any file open in the editor. I use it to call the Cloudflare API to purge the cache of my site after I make changes. It's also really useful to test new APIs or quickly create a bunch of file/requests for the current project. I use PHP on my landing page[1] so I can make changes and publish them immediately without any build step. This way, whenever…

The REST client extension is so awesome, ever since I figured out how to use it I've been trying to convince everyone I know to use it instead of Postman, cURL, etc. It's just so easy to save common requests to a file and have everything in my editor.

Re: Ask HN: What are your favorite developer-efficiency tips?

#365

Post by RBerenguel »

erichurkman wrote: post #79
ashnehete wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maintaining a Wiki or any sort of extensive note taking operation requires a lot of dedication and I guess practice? Do you have any tips for someone who wants to start out? Is there a smaller step that one could take initially?

I don't use a wiki but instead use Bear ( https://bear.app ) which gives cross-referential tags and a slick sorted tree of tags. I tag every article ('note') with a set of tags at the top. #d/2020/05/08 #fam/sis #fam/gifts — notes around a conversation I had with my sister today about potential gifts . #d/2020/05/05 #recipes/dinner #recipes/c/italian — notes a ravioli recipe I made on 5/5. If I later make it for a gr…

In case you want to generate a graph of your notes (via graphviz for now), I wrote a project recently (I'm working on a D3 version of the graph "at the moment" although it won't happen until at least tomorrow, today is off-programming day): https://github.com/rberenguel/bear-note-graph

edit: parse error, unbalanced parentheses

Re: Ask HN: What are your favorite developer-efficiency tips?

#366

Post by rochak »

tanin wrote: post #140

I just started at Stripe last year, and I found myself perform many mechanical tasks like: * Converting seconds-from-epoch to a human readable date * Select an id and pull info about it At first, I tried to perform these mechanical tasks with some crazy shortcuts. But remembering shortcuts for every little flow is heavy. Eventually, I've built a programmable tooltip on Mac OS X for these mechanical tasks. I'd love fo…

This is awesome.

Re: Ask HN: What are your favorite developer-efficiency tips?

#367

Post by lloeki »

city41 wrote: post #267
jmondi wrote: post #117

Write meaningful git commit messages, always. Even in stupid side projects that don't matter. Because then when you're at work, it will be second nature to write good messages, and your colleagues will absolutely appreciate it. I've been following the keywords here: https://github.com/joelparkerhenderson/git_commit_message

To add to that, rebase and generally "clean" your commits before pushing them out. A repo that has no "oops, typo" type commits in it is just so much more pleasant to navigate.

It goes into full effect when you came to witness a repo full of WIP/SAVEPOINT/fix typo commit that literally kills git blame/guy bisect.

Re: Ask HN: What are your favorite developer-efficiency tips?

#369

Post by hamandcheese »

Joeri wrote: post #360

The things I've benefited from most are not tools but practices. - Question the work Always be questioning whether the thing you're doing really needs to be done. Is there a way to not do it? Is there a way to do something better instead? - Park downhill Before putting a project or incomplete task away, make notes of what the next thing was that you were going to work on. This lets you bypass that 10 minute orientati…

Re: questioning the work... I’ve found that there’s a certain threshold (that is surprisingly high, sometimes) where it’s easier and faster to just do something low value than it is to convince everyone else involved and reach alignment that it isn’t a valuable thing to do.

Re: Ask HN: What are your favorite developer-efficiency tips?

#370

Post by jmchuster »

bbarn wrote: post #333

This is a bit of a departure from the question you asked, but I'm always amazed how much people tend to hyper-tune their dev environments, when in reality, most of my time is spent thinking how not to write code. I get just as much work done on a completely vanilla macbook with VS code installed on it as my editor-obsessed peers with obsessively optimized setups can. How much actual code are you writing? I'd be reall…

Your tooling isn't just about writing code, it's also about reading, analysis, debugging, research. You think about the code, have an idea, need to look up how something works, think some more, have this constant back and forth. Optimizing your environment minimizes the friction, and allows you to immediately get answers as soon as you have a thought about something, so you don't lose your train of thought.

You also want to be able to run quick experiments, same idea, get the answer to a question you're thinking about as fast as you think of it. And then once you actually know what you want to do, don't you want to have as smooth an experience executing your fait accompli? The primary focus is minimizing friction, and speed is just the observable side effect.

And then of course you can't ignore the natural human enjoyment that comes from customizing things to exactly how you like them.

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