For Devs only

I try to do less to achieve more – it is good; it makes me do my job faster and more easily; you should do so too. Automate, use shortcuts, innovate; well the initial investment might take a lot of time but it’s something you will be glad you did.
You can learn a lot by just exploring the tools you use daily. Just try to find a simpler way: some previously unknown feature in your favourite IDE, a macro to allow you repeat a series of actions or just something that saves you some keystrokes. So, I decided to post a couple of tips; I do hope you find them cool and pick up one or two new ideas.
Warning: Some of these work on linux only.

1. Bash Shortcuts

I stumbled upon these while going across someone’s .bashrc file and it stuck me as awesome; yes it is plain awesome. For example, accessing my /var/www/my-web-project folder (and I do access it often) is a pain; why do I have to type cd /var/www/my-web-project all the time? Solution? Just add the following shortcut to your .bashrc:

alias myproj=’cd /var/www/my-web-project’

and that’s it; I just type myproj in bash and am routed to that location. And yes, it doesn’t matter what directory I am in.

2. Bookmarks

Bookmarks are cool, I think they are absolutely essential. Now, if you don’t know how to use them or don’t use them in your IDE/Editor; stop reading and find how to use this wondrous time saver. I use bookmarks a lot in vim and Netbeans (and all other editors if possible); this allows me to jump around and move around. Yes, find out how to use bookmarks and use them!

Talking about vim; I think it’s really awesome and allows you to effortlessly edit anything that is text: I use it for code, latex, writing anything everything. At times, it might be easier to use a less powerful editor however most times, it does all and really cool too. And if you’re a ‘vimmer’, then try out these plugins: nerdtree, nerdcommenter, syntastic and latexbox (if you write in latex).

3. Debugger Statement (JavaScript)

I picked up this while watching an EmberJS tutorial and it has become a major part of my arsenal. Maybe I overuse it (well, I have to write so much JavaScript nowadays). Just put a debugger statement in any part of your JavaScript code and fire up that page in your browser; whenever execution gets to that point, it’ll automatically stop. I use this virtually everytime nowadays and for JavaScript devs; it’s a must use. Another cool JS tip involves using the console object; I use console.log too often but there are a couple of other cool functions like console.trace(), console.dir() etc.

4. Picking an object with a particular Characteristic

I picked up this trick while working in Python on my thesis: I often needed to pick up objects with certain properties out of long lists of objects. The interpreter is essential and this is what I do:

for obj in objectList:

if obj.ppty == criteria:

break

obj

Obj is now equal to my desired object.

5. Testing for -1 (Nice Discovery from SO)

I picked up this explanation from stack overflow and couldn’t help sharing it. I do hope you wouldn’t write code like this but it is always great to gain some insight into how things work.

Assuming you want to test if something is equal to -1; in 2’s complement systems, the representation of -1 is 11111111 (for whatever number of bits the system supports). Just take the bitwise inverse of that number and all you get is zeros. Now for the cool part, zero is a falsy value which can be used in your tests. Here is the link.

Hope you picked up something or the other from this; if you did; do share it with someone who might pick a point or another from it.

Did you like this post? Try out some of my other posts:

• Levels of Developer Expertise
• So you want to become a better programmer
• Design Patterns: PubSub Explained
• The language series: JavaScript
• Are developers better than testers?