3 ms·

These are great, thanks. Not what I had in mind with my question, but actually more foundational and important than what I was asking about.

keyle 3y ago
Ah yes, you mentioned "Developer Experience". This is what makes a difference for me in the last 20+ years... 1. Know your tools inside out. If you're a Vim user or not (I'm not), make sure you do most things with shortcuts as much you can. Take notice of every time you use the mouse and consider whether that could be keyboard driven. You'll first save seconds, which turn into minutes, then hours. 1b. Same for the terminal tools. My 'profile' is shock full of aliases and functions that make my life easier to talk to containers, other tools, etc. It almost becomes a library of power tools. 2. Effective navigation through code, forward, backwards, definitions, declarations. These should become second nature and effortless to save a ton of time! 3. Use every power tools available, whether it's static analysis tools like Rust Clippy, or language servers (LSP) in VSCode, Neovim or elsewhere; or chatGPT, make sure you make technology work for you, as much as possible. 4. Hook up to Dash or DevDocs to reduce your time clicking about Google trying to solve a problem. Knowing everything is impossible, knowing where to find the information quickly is a life saver. 5. Sometimes you'll find a really hairy bug, document it for your future self. Whether you blog it up at night or simply keep it in your (searchable) notes, it can save you 20 mins down the line, it's worth it. Sometimes it's a recipe list of "how do I do that with X" systems that can't be automated. If you can go home and forget everything, you're doing it right. 6. Turn off notifications etc. as much as possible. This is well known... It's perfectly fine to browse HN in my mind as it's a net addition to my life, but be conscious about time spent on socials and more importantly knowing when to turn them off.

keyle 3y ago

Ah yes, you mentioned "Developer Experience". This is what makes a difference for me in the last 20+ years... 1. Know your tools inside out. If you're a Vim user or not (I'm not), make sure you do most things with shortcuts as much you can. Take notice of every time you use the mouse and consider whether that could be keyboard driven. You'll first save seconds, which turn into minutes, then hours. 1b. Same for the terminal tools. My 'profile' is shock full of aliases and functions that make my life easier to talk to containers, other tools, etc. It almost becomes a library of power tools. 2. Effective navigation through code, forward, backwards, definitions, declarations. These should become second nature and effortless to save a ton of time! 3. Use every power tools available, whether it's static analysis tools like Rust Clippy, or language servers (LSP) in VSCode, Neovim or elsewhere; or chatGPT, make sure you make technology work for you, as much as possible. 4. Hook up to Dash or DevDocs to reduce your time clicking about Google trying to solve a problem. Knowing everything is impossible, knowing where to find the information quickly is a life saver. 5. Sometimes you'll find a really hairy bug, document it for your future self. Whether you blog it up at night or simply keep it in your (searchable) notes, it can save you 20 mins down the line, it's worth it. Sometimes it's a recipe list of "how do I do that with X" systems that can't be automated. If you can go home and forget everything, you're doing it right. 6. Turn off notifications etc. as much as possible. This is well known... It's perfectly fine to browse HN in my mind as it's a net addition to my life, but be conscious about time spent on socials and more importantly knowing when to turn them off.