Software devs, how have you sped up your workflow?

#1

Post by potatopotahto » Sat, Dec 11, 2021, 12:40 PM UTC

Lately I've been paying attention to where I spend time and I've managed to find some low-hanging fruit and optimize some tasks.

Examples like using fish (unix shell), writing shell scripts to automate sequential build commands I'd otherwise have to wait for, learning vim shortcuts and language syntax, implementing reusable utility scripts to produce/consume data.

Do you have recommendations/tips/examples to speed up your processes? Feel free to share even specific instances, they don't have to be as generic as above.

Re: Software devs, how have you sped up your workflow?

#2

Post by raman162 » Sat, Dec 11, 2021, 1:07 PM UTC

The biggest time saver I noticed is a suite of vim functions I wrote to run rspec.tests in rails projects. I can easily run a whole spec file, a specific test (via line number) and run failures with leader based commands in normal mode. Saves significant dev time and avoids the slow down of switching to the terminal and writing out the commands.

Re: Software devs, how have you sped up your workflow?

#3

Post by Flankk » Sat, Dec 11, 2021, 1:31 PM UTC

Be careful with premature optimization. It's a nefarious form of procrastination because it appears you're being productive. That said, I want to learn vim but I have more important things to do right now.

Re: Software devs, how have you sped up your workflow?

#4

Post by codingdave » Sat, Dec 11, 2021, 2:14 PM UTC

I find that optimizing the butt-in-seat work has far less impact than optimizing meeting attendance. That doesn't just mean skipping worthless meetings, it means coordinating with your company to put meetings in specific blocks of time, leaving large swaths of free time for deep work.

(Easier said than done, I know.)

Re: Software devs, how have you sped up your workflow?

#5

Post by gitgud » Sat, Dec 11, 2021, 2:23 PM UTC

[1] Dotfiles are a way to speed up your workflow. Basically just saving your system scripts to a Git repo, which allows you to manage & iterate on them easily. Also makes it easy to move environments and sync between machines etc..

[1] https://github.com/holman/dotfiles

Re: Software devs, how have you sped up your workflow?

#6

Post by etothet » Sat, Dec 11, 2021, 2:24 PM UTC

Learning to use your tools (editor, debugging, etc.) to the extent that they can help your work is the best way I can think of to build efficiency.

I see many fellow developers who stumble using their editor/IDE or who aren’t leveraging even the most basic code navigation keyboard shortcuts (let alone refactoring features) that it seems they often spend more time navigating code than they spend on actually writing it.

Re: Software devs, how have you sped up your workflow?

#7

Post by thrower123 » Sat, Dec 11, 2021, 2:25 PM UTC

codingdave wrote: post #4

I find that optimizing the butt-in-seat work has far less impact than optimizing meeting attendance. That doesn't just mean skipping worthless meetings, it means coordinating with your company to put meetings in specific blocks of time, leaving large swaths of free time for deep work. (Easier said than done, I know.)

Energy is a very finite resource, especially as you get older, and meetings are vampires.

I keep trying to indicate that scheduling 10:30 and 2:30 meetings basically blows out the entire day for several years now, but I've not made much progress.

Re: Software devs, how have you sped up your workflow?

#8

Post by harryvederci » Sat, Dec 11, 2021, 2:41 PM UTC

Just like you're creating shell scripts to automate things you do manually more than X times, you can create vim keybindings to do the same. I recommend using something like the "which-key" [0], so you don't have to memorise those keybindings. You press a hotkey in vim, and a window pops up with available commands.

[0] which-key exists for neovim, probably for vim as well. I think it originates from emacs, which I'm purely mentioning because I'm anticipating a response from a triggered emacs user if I don't. :)

Re: Software devs, how have you sped up your workflow?

#9

Post by gingerlime » Sat, Dec 11, 2021, 2:48 PM UTC

raman162 wrote: post #2

The biggest time saver I noticed is a suite of vim functions I wrote to run rspec.tests in rails projects. I can easily run a whole spec file, a specific test (via line number) and run failures with leader based commands in normal mode. Saves significant dev time and avoids the slow down of switching to the terminal and writing out the commands.

sounds useful! care to share?

Re: Software devs, how have you sped up your workflow?

#10

Post by speedgoose » Sat, Dec 11, 2021, 3:05 PM UTC

Github Copilot has been very helpful for me.