Putting this in my hosts file helped me maintain my focus. 127.0.0.1 news.ycombinator.com 127.0.0.1 reddit.com 127.0.0.1 facebook.com
But. . .then. . .how. . .did you get to this site?
Ask HN: Which tools have made you a much better programmer?
51–60 of 519 posts
Re: Ask HN: Which tools have made you a much better programmer?
#52Choice of editor is subject to taste, but I find VI/Vim keybindings and modal editing an absolute must-have for productivity.
I agree. When first learning Vim the learning curve is very steep for what feels like basically advanced cursor moving but with more experience it becomes a very powerful text editor. Last week another I had a 10,000 line file that was the output of a bash command with two columns and each column was in quotes. I needed to remove the first column and the quotes around the second column. There are many ways to do it b…
As an opinion, https://vimvalley.com/ was well worth the investment.
I use https://www.spacemacs.org/, but modal editing is a win.
Re: Ask HN: Which tools have made you a much better programmer?
#53Putting this in my hosts file helped me maintain my focus. 127.0.0.1 news.ycombinator.com 127.0.0.1 reddit.com 127.0.0.1 facebook.com
But. . .then. . .how. . .did you get to this site?
:)
I have a dedicated "time-wasting" computer - this helps me recognize when I'm spending too much time doing things that may not be important.
Re: Ask HN: Which tools have made you a much better programmer?
#54If you consider processes as tools, there's one that I suggest to junior programmers bucking for responsibility/promotions.
Twenty minute cleanup. Nobody is really going to notice if you spent 5 hours or 5:20 on a task. As you're closing up and getting ready to push your changes, look if there's anything you can do to make it look or work nicer.
Eventually you start incorporating some of the lessons learned doing this into your implementations.
Re: Ask HN: Which tools have made you a much better programmer?
#55Most of my productivity gains these days has come from aligning myself and my workstation.
- i3wm (https://i3wm.org/) - particularly getting comfortable editing the .i3/config. It's the most significant productivity change I've had since switching to Linux from Windows.
To get into it, I highly recommend this 3-part video series from Code Cast: https://youtu.be/j1I63wGcvU4
- yadm (https://yadm.io/) - a dotfile manager. It's essentially a git wrapper, but it's allowed me tons of freedom tweaking my setup without worrying about persisting it.
It supports encryption and switching file versions based on which system you're on.
Re: Ask HN: Which tools have made you a much better programmer?
#56- GNU/Linux + i3wm; complete control over my programming environment. - bash + GNU coreutils; seriously, take the time to be able to write helpful bash scripts which can run basically anywhere. - git; use it even when you're not pushing to a remote. Add helpful aliases for everyday commands. Build a good mental model of commits and branches to help you through tough merges. ( my ~/.gitconfig: https://gist.github.com/…
For a very long time I didn't use anything besides just plain vim, 2 biggest things to add to your vim use is undodir and YouCompleteMe. Crazy that I didn't have either of these for so long, undodir I wish was part of the default.
New(ISH) vim user here. I couldn't figure out how to install YouCompleteMe the other day, but I had not trouble with coc.
Re: Ask HN: Which tools have made you a much better programmer?
#57If you consider processes as tools, there's one that I suggest to junior programmers bucking for responsibility/promotions. Twenty minute cleanup. Nobody is really going to notice if you spent 5 hours or 5:20 on a task. As you're closing up and getting ready to push your changes, look if there's anything you can do to make it look or work nicer. Eventually you start incorporating some of the lessons learned doing thi…
+1 to this. I've developed the habit of reviewing my PRs before publishing them. When you assume the role of a reviewer, you end up catching a lot of little (and sometimes big!) stuff, reducing the total turnaround time.
Re: Ask HN: Which tools have made you a much better programmer?
#58If you think of languages like tools I find Haskell particularly productive. The type checker gives me a whole program view of every branch and I can interactively query my program thanks to strong inference and good tooling.
Mastering a good emacs setup has boosted my productivity with git and having OS-agnostic tooling for linting, debugging, shell, document publishing, email, etc.
Re: Ask HN: Which tools have made you a much better programmer?
#59That's easy, every time I did something new I learned a lot.
First time
+ Linux.
+ Shell scripting.
+ Grep, regex
+ Embedded development, configuring ADC hardware, e.g.
+ FPGA, designing FSMs, adders, etc.
+ Reverse engineering anything. Use a logic analyser. I just learned the details on HDMI a week ago, for example.
+ Vim, and sticking to it in the beginning. :-)
+ Basic sysop stuff, ssh, rsync, dig, etc.
+ Cuda.
+ Tensorflow.
+ Javascript. Definitely if you come from a C angle. Playing with modern frameworks doesn't hurt!
Of course those are not just tools, but they all help understanding what's the best tool for the job. :-)
Re: Ask HN: Which tools have made you a much better programmer?
#60xargs! Instant concurrency for small scripts.