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Ask HN: Programs that saved you 100 hours?

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261–270 of 531 posts

Re: Ask HN: Programs that saved you 100 hours?

#261

Intellij IDEA and Pycharm. The autocomplete, search for symbols, quick documentation and especially refactoring have saved me well over 100 hours, especially at work with larger projects.

These IDEs are so powerful, I feel like I'm only ever scratching the surface. Double tapping shift to search for any file in the project is a favourite of mine.

Re: Ask HN: Programs that saved you 100 hours?

#262
post #179

For better or worse, I find GUI git clients to be less useful than the CLI. But like any CLI tool, it's productivity is limited by your ability to type without errors. Git has an Autocorrect[1] that will help you out. > git config --global help.autocorrect 1 Based on bash history data, I've also added a simple alias to my bash config: > alias gti="git" [1]: https://git-scm.com/book/en/v2/Customizing-Git-Git-Configura…

"Based on bash history data" is an interesting point, because it highlights that you can use your history to periodically check what you do inefficiently in the terminal, and which aliases you still need to add to your config: compute some statistics on the number of 1-word and 2-word commands you use the most, and see if they are more than e.g. 4 letters. With zsh: "history 1 | awk '{print $2}' | sort | uniq -c | so…

While we’re on the subject of shortcuts, I have `awk1` mapped to `awk '{print $1}'` and the same up to awk9. It’s not that I can’t type it but it breaks my flow for such a simple use case.

Re: Ask HN: Programs that saved you 100 hours?

#263

Node.js -- Can easily build a ton of server side and CLI tools with ease. Saved me a ton of time!

Coming from a Java environment, I can't agree enough... A lot of my fellow devs would think of NodeJS as a replacement for Ruby--inefficient and not production ready. When I first tried NodeJS, I was hooked... You can build simple CRUD backend APIs within minutes! I'm aware you can do the same with Java, e.g. something like Spring Boot streamlines the process a ton as well, but the feedback loop of just writing a lin…

Wouldn't the fact that Go does not have exceptions be a deterrent to move from Java?

(I am an amateur Python dev and tried Go but could not live with the error handling boilerplate and the lack of exceptions. It looks like a nice language though)

Re: Ask HN: Programs that saved you 100 hours?

#264
post #216

Not sure if it saved me 100hrs but Clipman[1], a simple clipboard manager. This combined with a Super+C shortcut means you can copy multiple things in once and paste them in the order you want. * [1]: https://docs.xfce.org/panel-plugins/clipman/start

I use ditto and it is fantastic as well https://ditto-cp.sourceforge.io/

Re: Ask HN: Programs that saved you 100 hours?

#265
i3, vim, and vimium.

Not only saved me tons of time and increased my development speed, but allowed me to recover from RSI and pains in my forearm, which in my case was caused by moving my hands between the home row, arrow keys and mouse constantly, and especially worsened when using the mouse scroll wheel.

Re: Ask HN: Programs that saved you 100 hours?

#266
post #20
post #3

BeyondCompare (cited in the original thread), especially the folder comparison feature. Saved my sanity when our team's shared directory stopped syncing silently on my laptop and I had to figure out which files I needed to sync manually. WizTree ( https://antibody-software.com/web/software/software/wiztree-... ) is a freeware Windows utility (man, typing this took me back to 1997) that lets you quickly see which file…

Meld [0] (written with GTK so available on Windows, Linux, and possibly Mac but I don't know about that last one) is another tool in the first category. WinDirStat [1] (Windows) for the second. It is also available in the super-useful PortableApps format [2], which is always nice. [0]: https://meldmerge.org/ [1]: https://windirstat.net/ [2]: https://portableapps.com/apps

`ncdu` is my preferred Linux ncurses equivalent to windirstat

Re: Ask HN: Programs that saved you 100 hours?

#267
Git Bash on Windows. Things like this were always possible, but none of them made the install as quick and painless. This has been especially useful in Linux+Windows shops. You can simply state a requirement of "Windows users: Install Git For Windows", after which you can script things more less identically across both OS's.

Re: Ask HN: Programs that saved you 100 hours?

#268
post #22

Here's a couple (albeit macOS focused) favorites of mine: - Deliveries: macOS / iOS package tracking https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/deliveries-a-package-tracker... - Screenotate: OCR all of your screenshots with metadata like program/webpage https://screenotate.com - The Tagger: lightweight macOS utility to tag music / fetch metadata from discogs https://deadbeatsw.com/thetagger/ - youtube-dl: Download any video / s…

And for those who don't know, youtube-dl supports many, many other sites besides YouTube, including Vimeo, TikTok, Dailymotion, Twitch, YouKu, LiveLeak, Streamable and more. Full list: https://ytdl-org.github.io/youtube-dl/supportedsites.html

The youtube-dl crew really does a good job, when you have an issue with a supported website, just picking the last commit generally solve the problem.

Re: Ask HN: Programs that saved you 100 hours?

#269
- Windows. By not having to configure drivers and other compatibility problems which I have on Linux it definitely saved me 100 hours.

- Listary (windows) Not sure if its 100 hours, but I love its search in any context of explorer. Default explorer search is terrible IMO. For example when you open file - you can use search there instead of navigating by hand.

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