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Ask HN: Which tools have made you a much better programmer?

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Re: Ask HN: Which tools have made you a much better programmer?

#391

Post by Myrmornis »

bpicolo wrote: post #383
Myrmornis wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The arrival of Language Server Protocol is going to make IDE-like functionality more evenly spread across traditional text editors, "modern" text editors and "IDEs". In Emacs I recommend eglot: https://github.com/joaotavora/eglot

I used to be very gungho on text editors (started my career with Sublime, moved to VSCode later), but I've turned the other way and use Jetbrains products now. LSP is decent, but I've yet to see any languages with the depth and quality of Jetbrains IDE support, by a fairly large margin. I've had to fight VSCode settings many, many times in to world of Go, but Goland "just works" for the essentials - intellisense and…

Yes I definitely believe everything you say. I will say that currently I'm using LSP (Emacs Eglot) for Python (pyls) and Rust (rust-analyzer) and the difference is (unsurprisingly!) night and day. I love Jedi and I'm sure Palantir did a decent job but... but rust-analyzer on the other hand, I wonder if in a year or two, is it possible that Rust in Emacs might not be so far off the best "IDE"?

Re: Ask HN: Which tools have made you a much better programmer?

#392

Post by pathartl »

Artlav wrote: post #312
pathartl wrote: post #244

An actual debugger. I started as a PHP/WP dev and spent many hours running results through echo or var_dump. IMO the debugger is the absolute first thing you need to learn about the platform you're writing for. Without it, you're taking shots in the dark and you truly don't know how your code is executing. It seriously pains me to see people not using one. I have a friend who is taking an online PHP backend class. Th…

I'm really confused by this. Don't debuggers come embedded into any IDE worth using? How could someone start programming this century without access to one?

In the PHP world I'd argue most developers don't use an IDE, let alone a debugger. Setting a debugger up with Xdebug or ZendDebugger is also not easy for those less experienced with setting up the actual PHP environment.

Re: Ask HN: Which tools have made you a much better programmer?

#393

Post by ativzzz »

cosmojg wrote: post #237
freehunter wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not the original person so I have no idea what their experience is, but I feel pretty much the same. Every time I work in a language other than Ruby, it feels like programming . When I work in Ruby the language feels almost effortless. I wish I could do everything in Ruby and it frustrates me when there is something I can't make work in Ruby. Especially Rails, everything that works works so smoothly. When it does…

What are your thoughts on Crystal? See: https://crystal-lang.org/

It's ruby but with extra steps

Re: Ask HN: Which tools have made you a much better programmer?

#394

Post by twright0 »

smichel17 wrote: post #104
tych0 wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My life was also improved with some additional aliases in my git config: [alias] dfif = diff idff = diff grpe = grep

bashrc snippet (with extra newlines, for folks on mobile apps like materialistic that don't understand code formatting): # I do this an embarrassing amount alias fgf='fg' alias fgfg='fg' alias gf='fg' alias gfg='fg'

This resonates... from mine:

  alias emcas='emacs'

  alias emac='emacs'

  alias emasc='emacs'

  alias enacs='emacs'

  alias emas='emacs'

  alias emascs='emacs'

  alias eamcs='emacs'

  alias eemacs='emacs'

Re: Ask HN: Which tools have made you a much better programmer?

#396

Post by auslegung »

tkainrad wrote: post #89

For me, the transition from Bash to Zsh has been a huge efficiency boost. Mainly because of some great plugins for Zsh, such as z, zsh-peco-history (better history search), zsh-autosuggestions, and zsh-syntax-highlighting. My blog post about setting up a Linux workstation describes this in detail: https://tkainrad.dev/posts/setting-up-linux-workstation/#swi... . The best thing is, there is no initial productivity hit…

Today I switched from zsh to fish and I'm already much happier. Was using zsh for 4+ years, too

Re: Ask HN: Which tools have made you a much better programmer?

#397

Post by kyleashipley »

tudorpavel wrote: post #121
ayberk wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

+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.

+1 to self code reviews, I almost always find stuff I've missed or could have done better.

I often comment on my own PRs to explain alternatives or tradeoffs I considered. These aren't necessarily worth capturing in permanent documentation or TODOs, but can share knowledge or build confidence that I've considered various angles that might come up in a review.

I'll also call out places where I'm not happy with the implementation, looking for feedback, etc.

Re: Ask HN: Which tools have made you a much better programmer?

#398

Post by stonogo »

patrec wrote: post #381
nh2 wrote: post #197

strace. Even after having learned many programming languages and contributed to various projects, it was only when I started using strace that I felt like truly, efficiently understand what any program does, and can reliably write programs that do things fast. I believe that "syscall oriented programming" (making your program emit exactly and only the right syscalls) results in clean, understandable software. Now I u…

Do not use strace. Use sysdig which is superior in just about every way.

sysdig is useless without installing nontrivial performance-impacting instrumentation, cannot handle non-IP networking, does not fully report all syscalls, has a license with patent crap in it, has gated features behind a paywall, and cannot inject syscall faults. It's not even in the same class of tool as strace at this point.

Re: Ask HN: Which tools have made you a much better programmer?

#399

Post by soulnothing »

* Arch Linux / Manjaro. AUR is a great resource for the latest packages

* i3 / sway. I've built a number of custom patches on top of it.

* Windows Aero Snap - a close second

* MacOs - Yabai + skhd a very distant third. Mac doesn't just play as well with tiling.

* LibVirt / Virt Manager / CockPit / VFIO. I have a number of VMs emulating mac, windows, and linux. My workstation is all three in one. I also have a local kube cluster spun up via the libvirt api.

* JetBrains - Tool Suite They're tooling is phenomenal

* vim / nvim - My secondary editor for quick changes.

* Visual Studio Code - Primarily for remote sharing work spaces.

* Git - I keep almost everything in a git store of some sort.

* zsh and oh my zsh, great plugins.

* Kitty - terminal with the kittens plugins is great

* Direnv + EnvFile, dynamic loading of container env vars on entering a directory

* GitLab - Despite it's warts the best dev ops cloud agnostic platform I've used.

* Kotlin - I'm able to do pretty much everything in this. From vim over ssh or jetbrains. I use it for infrastructure, k8, mobile, web, and back end.

* Gradle - I curse at it a lot, but less than other build systems. I have templates that allow me to quick start any of the above templates.

* Remote Desktop - I keep a cheap dedicated server I RDP for heavy work loads while away from my workstation

* Reg Ex Pal - to validate reg ex

* Functional Programming

* Markdown / Restructured text - Great way to write docs and draft architectural plans

* MermaidJS, Lucid Chart - Easily embedded in markdown to provide graphs of architectural patterns.

* OpenAPI/AsyncAPI/GraphQL - Schema driven design let's me write the schema first, then generate type safe routes for the server, and clients for the consumers (web/mobile)

* Avro, Protobuf, Json Schema - For defining messages going across the wire.

* Containers - I started with solaris zones and it has been vital to my workflow.

* Docker Compose - This is the lowest barrier to providing a container stack for local dev. Next would be KIND.

* Docsify, Sphinx / etc. Easy way to add architectural docs next to the api docs as part of git pages.

That being said, I generally am unable to use a majority of these in my day job. So I'm operating much slower than I'm capable of.

Re: Ask HN: Which tools have made you a much better programmer?

#400

Post by wolco »

selimthegrim wrote: post #374
samatman wrote: post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yes, and as Army slang, it made it into American English through Vietnamese

I'm pretty sure in Louisiana it was already in slang through French here

Hundreds of years of French culture through Louisiana.

Other unique French US cultures:

Haitian Creole

New England French were are Canadian migrants.

Missouri French

Muskrat French from Michigan

North Dakoka Metis French

It could have come to some from 40 years old but it was already here for many.

Still it's a French word. It is like going to Germany and learning an English word but calling it German.

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