How do you work with computers and the web that is different from non-developers?

Comments

[Adam Nathaniel Davis]

• As has already been mentioned by others, I'm far more likely to open the dev tools and actually inspect the calls that are going out to grab data - or to track what I'm doing.
  
  

• As silly as this sounds, it's amazing how many people will open a web page with a huge amount of text and then spend copious amounts of time reading through the whole dang thing until they find what they're looking for. Years ago, an executive in my company was watching me look for info on a series of pages and he was amazed by my frequent use of CTRL-F to quickly hone in on the data I was looking for.
  
  

• I often find myself needing to retrieve the plain-text value of a password that's been saved for me in Chrome. By default, the password field is always displayed with <input type="password"/>, which means that the "text" is obfuscated from me. So I inspect the <input> element, change it to <input type="text"/>, and I can grab the raw password value that's stored in my browser.
  
  

• I'm also far more likely to use the dev tools to.... "borrow" any of the assets that are used to build the page.
  
  

• For all of my frequently-visited bookmarks, I edit the bookmark so there's no text/title in them. In this way, my bookmarks bar just has a series of icons. This allows me to fit all of my most-used bookmarks in my bookmark bar, like so:
  dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/up...

[Jonas Petri]

The last one is really smart, I should try it out! Right now my bookmark bar is pretty full since I use labels, but this looks like a much better approach. And if it’s a website you don’t know the icon of, you probably don’t use it often enough for it to be there…

[ErrorGamer2000]

I have done this for a few years with the bookmarks for sites I use often... And have so far been the only one of the people I have seen to do so.

[nyxb]

Nice idea with Icons in bookmarks

[Lou Willoughby]

I notice issues more with a website UI now, i then think of things as a developer like why is that broken or not working?
I also can't help but notice non technical people use a computer or navigate something and i'm like 👀 but it does help my user knowledge because just because i think something is simple others don't

[Kirill Shestakov]

I run git init and git add . && git commit ... in any place where I want to keep version history, for things like notes and documents.

[Andrew Baisden]

I use the dev tools to check out the code, console to see if there is anything getting logged. Network tab to see what is loading. Browser extensions to see what the technical stack is etc...

[Kasey Speakman]

I paid to have access to vehicle manufacturer repair manuals for 2 days, to have them for my family's vehicles. They had removed the downloadable manuals, confirmed by support. Going to 1200 pages (for one car) and individually saving them.... no. I did a lot of investigation and ultimately wrote a couple hundred lines of JS to download the pages.

[Parker Waiters]

If a site is janky I'll whip open the dev tools so fast to see what's going on.

[Jonas Petri]

Well, during my ICT lessons, I am the number one person people ask for help if they don’t understand something, even if it has nothing to do with programming. Excel, Photoshop, anything. Some people prefer to ask me for help rather than asking the teacher since they think I explain thing clearer than the teacher lol

[Fen]

• Bypasss the adblocker wall by querying the page on insomnia/postman, I guess turning off javascript would also work but I find easier

• Frequently check for dependencies and warning/errors messages on dev tools. I found that lots of pages still depend on jquery and most warnings are from adblock doing it's work

[Jon Randy 🎖️]

I navigate with the keyboard an awful lot... So it drives me round the bend when I use sites, or review code that breaks basic keyboard navigation expectations

[Ben Halpern]

My wife — who is a very efficient computer user in her own right — was kind of amazed at how quick I was with my keyboard-based window management the other day. I can't even remember most of my shortcuts if you asked me, but they are deep in muscle memory. 😅

[Alex Lohr]

Using dev tools on normal pages now and then, shell scripting menial tasks, configure my system exactly the way I want and I currently play around with an Arduino to make it show stuff on a segment displays love a friend wanted to use as a prop for a cosplay...

[David Cantrell]

• Just about any multi-step task that I have to do more than once I wrap in a script;
• I have the same configuration EVERYWHERE. It's stored in git, and it checks for updates. If a tool's configuration can't be conveniently handled like that it's a shitty tool and I don't use it;
• Instead of watching videos or listening to audio in a browser I turn it into private podcasts so I can consume on whatever device I like whenever I like;
• I have custom compose key mappings so I can type H̸̡̪̯ͨ͊̽̅̾̎Ȩ̬̩̾͛ͪ̈́̀́͘ ̶̧̨̱̹̭̯ͧ̾ͬC̷̙̲̝͖ͭ̏ͥͮ͟Oͮ͏̮̪̝͍M̲̖͊̒ͪͩͬ̚̚͜Ȇ̴̟̟͙̞ͩ͌͝S̨̥̫͎̭ͯ̿̔̀ͅ (and also in Greek, all the Latin accents, mathematical symbols and so on). Only amateurs pick characters from an onscreen list;
• I use a trackball.

But most importantly ... I have automatic backups, which I test regularly, and I have offline backups, because I know that computers are malicious and untrustworthy.

[Leonard Smith]

CAPSLOCK = ctrl on hold, esc on tap, CTRL = hyper

Keybinding to toggle every app and never cmd(alt) tab

Dock is hidden and unused

Absurd amount of keyboard maestro macros.

I write everything in Drafts.app first (including this comment). I don’t want to type into Slack/Email. It’s a new paradigm shift, because I just start writing and if I decide never to send it (or send it in a different medium) it’s in my Drafts collection forever, don’t have to worry about losing or accidentally sending anything, or people seeing that I’m typing.

The only problem is I'm a complete disaster if I have to use anyone else's computer. When I was in the office I'd drag my keyboard to a teammate's desk if we ever pair, because I can't not use capslock as ctrl (i also ctrl+a, ctrl+k a lot in macos)

[is dotnet dead]

I know, Software engineers and web developers' work intersects frequently, but the two professions differ in important ways. Interestingly, this function of Internet use has no parallels in television viewing. blogs.embarcadero.com/is-net-reall...

[ErrorGamer2000]

Same here gol for using vscode target thank word. I actually really like markdown...

[zakwillis]

For one - I use a computer which means I don't pretend it can all be done on a mobile phone. lol