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Discussion on: How to Improve Your Development Experience

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erebos-manannan profile image
Erebos Manannán

One thing that seems to be missing is spending time looking into new tools and ways of working that make you more efficient. E.g. instead of manually managing servers, everyone should nowadays use either configuration management tools (such as Salt Stack, or Ansible), or Kubernetes + Docker, or any other such highly automated environments.

If you end up with managing servers with configuration management tools, don't forget to use Vagrant for your development environment. For Kubernetes, check out minikube.

A comfortable environment

If possible I highly recommend an adjustable height table, and using it in the standing position regularly. It's better for your energy levels, and health.

Also switch that office chair to a gym ball, or any other such off-balance chair.

You need to get familiar with hot-keys / keyboard shortcuts. These are a huge time-saver.

There's a limit to this. Know a few of the most common things you do, otherwise just learn how to find the rest via the menus or something. You can easily spend more time learning shortcuts, than using them.

Every piece of code that you write, needs to be re-usable.

That sounds like you're wasting time where it doesn't need to be wasted, which sounds odd for a post that is focused on efficiency/speed.

Not everything needs to be reusable, and not everything should be written with the possibility that it might be reusable. If it doesn't seem like it's likely it will be reusable, you often shouldn't waste time on making it reusable.

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theoutlander profile image
Nick Karnik

Thanks for these great suggestions. I agree with your sentiment on writing reusable code. I was in two minds when I wrote that. I usually write code in a modular and reusable fashion without much effort. However, we definitely need to draw a line.

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erebos-manannan profile image
Erebos Manannán

Oh and I forgot to mention: stop drinking coffee.

One of the clearest efficiency killers I see every day is people riding the caffeine wave, trying to wake up, or crashing. Stop abusing caffeine and you won't have either of the issues.