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Developer and Power Users Tool List for Windows

hanselman.com

51–60 of 235 posts

Re: Developer and Power Users Tool List for Windows

#51
post #33

I'd add UELI[0] — probably the best alfred style launcher. Does almost everything including Everything integration. Also this script[1] for AHK to quckly jump from "Save as" window to folder currently opened in file explorer. [0] — https://ueli.app/#/ [1] — https://pastebin.com/cmLVFdbB

Just saw Ueli from the article. Looks really interesting but it seems to be built in Electron. What's its footprint like? I'm currently very happy using the nice lightweight Launchy but it hasn't been updated in a long time. Still works great but requires a bit of tinkering to get it going in Win10, last time I tried.

Performance wise it's fine for me but it does have some rough edges like:

- Moves across the screen for a while when using custom scaling

- Doesn't sort by most used result hits (always shows same order)

- Hangs for me when I click on results instead of navigating by keyboard

- Doesn't have an option to kill apps like Wox

But apart from these it does a lot of things quite well.

Re: Developer and Power Users Tool List for Windows

#53
AutoHotKey finally fell off my list, to be replaced by... powershell. After about 8 years of utter disdain for the mistake that is powershell, I’m actually enjoying giving it a proper test drive.

I can’t quite believe it myself but i chsh’d to pwsh on my mac and linux boxes too.

Goodbye 30 lines of AHK just to capture and parse the output of a RunWait (in practice it was better to create a WSH com object and exec the command from there since it’s only 3 lines of code to grab stdout then).

Re: Developer and Power Users Tool List for Windows

#54
post #6

I wonder why the author recommend winget but not scoop. Scoop obviously has more community support and that's the most important part of a package manager (more packages, more frequent update, etc).

> I wonder why the author recommend winget but not scoop. Scott Hanselman works for Microsoft and is a prominent advocate for the .NET/Microsoft ecosystem so his recommendations are likely to skew towards native MS tools in the first instance. Nothing wrong with that as long as you consume his material through that lens! That said, I'm quite surprised I hadn't heard of Scoop[0]. Looks interesting... [0] https://scoop…

Best thing about scoop is that it doesn't need admin privileges. Everything is installed as portables in user directory

Re: Developer and Power Users Tool List for Windows

#56
post #55

Funny, how big part of the list are Linux-origin projects or WSL. How about really making the switch to Linux instead of trying to make Windows function like Linux?

Both OS's have up and downsides. What's wrong with emulating parts of other OS's you like, in the OS you like?

Re: Developer and Power Users Tool List for Windows

#57
post #55

Funny, how big part of the list are Linux-origin projects or WSL. How about really making the switch to Linux instead of trying to make Windows function like Linux?

I've been using WSL and a lot of unix tools on Windows. I have a simple reason: Windows is a much better desktop environment.

I tried to switch from macOS to Linux. I've found workarounds / alternatives to almost all of my issues on Linux. One issue seems to be unfixable though;

I have a 4K monitor and pretty much required to use fractional scaling. Windows and macOS does it perfectly. I had good luck with Pop!_OS but 1.5x scaling is always blurry on Linux. Apparently it can not do non integer scaling so the current hack is to scale 3x and then resize the framebuffer to half the size. Nope.

So I switched to the next best thing: Windows with WSL.

Re: Developer and Power Users Tool List for Windows

#58
post #8

Sort of a side note: Exceptional Mac programs are often showcased and awarded. Either by Apple or others in the Mac “community”. Is there example from the Windows side? Programs that highlight the very best the Windows platform can deliver?

I think that there are simply too many to spotlight.

Re: Developer and Power Users Tool List for Windows

#59

AutoHotKey finally fell off my list, to be replaced by... powershell. After about 8 years of utter disdain for the mistake that is powershell, I’m actually enjoying giving it a proper test drive. I can’t quite believe it myself but i chsh’d to pwsh on my mac and linux boxes too. Goodbye 30 lines of AHK just to capture and parse the output of a RunWait (in practice it was better to create a WSH com object and exec the…

How did you finally get into it? I was stoked about it 15 years ago when I first read about it, but using it never clicked with me. Every now and then I enthusiastically try to embrace it, just to eventually be annoyed by all the clumsiness, lack of speed, or about having to wade through layers of objects just to get to the information I need. It just does not have the feeling of a tool for shell users honed by shell users, but a soulless navigation tool for a Byzantine object structure.

I finally decided Powershell is not so much a shell but rather an environment good for scripting.

What direction did you come from when embracing it? Did you have a strong background of Unix admin / developer use of shells?

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