More Than Code: 8 Lessons for Better Programming

Amrit — Thu, 29 Jan 2026 12:47:06 +0000

Most of us start by coding. Over time, we learn that good software is about much more than just making things work. These are a few lessons that helped me move from writing code to actually programming .

1. Programming ≠ Coding

Coding is about making something run. Programming is about solving problems thoughtfully—handling errors, choosing good names, and working around limitations in a clean way.

2. Small Interfaces Make Stronger Abstractions

Classes with too many methods become hard to understand and maintain. Prefer fewer, more general methods over many special-case ones.

3. Sometimes Copying Is Better Than Adding a Dependency

Dependencies come with long-term costs. If you only need a small piece of functionality, copying a few lines can be safer than pulling in an entire package.

4. Errors Are Your Friends

Errors aren’t noise to be ignored. They are signals. Make them clear, meaningful, and helpful—for yourself and for future users.

5. Naming Matters More Than You Think

Good names can act as documentation. Clear, descriptive names often remove the need for excessive comments.

6. Use a Style Guide

You may not like style guides, but consistency helps teams communicate through code. Your future teammates (and future you) will thank you.

7. Choose the Right Language for the Job

Any Turing-complete language can solve problems, but not with the same ease. Productivity, ecosystem, and tooling matter more than theoretical power.

8. Know Your Ignorance

Software development is continuous learning. Understanding what you don’t know—and how to discover it—is a critical professional skill.

Final Thought

Read Full Article on my blog

The Minimalist Terminal Setup

Amrit — Thu, 06 Jun 2019 12:25:52 +0000

TL;DR Alacritty + Tmux + Vim

I find the beauty of a development environment in its simplicity. How much an IDE or setup can do without external plugins is their true extent of utility.

I love minimalist setups, I don't like bloating the software with external plugins and themes just to make it look pretty. A config file saved somewhere in /home directory is more elegant than GUI or Wizard. If you are like me, you will also love this minimalist terminal setup.

Alacritty

Alacritty is nothing but a terminal emulator. It does not have features that you'll generally find in an interactive terminal emulator. List all the things it does not have.

Multiple tabs
Preference Wizard
Package Manager(of any kind)
Built-in themes
No GUI settings window of any kind.

List of things it is.

Fast
Simple
Independent
Extensible
< 2.0 MB size

Alacritty is faster than any interactive terminal apps. It does not require extra setup or dependency to run. It can also apply settings from existing configuration files i.e. .bashrc, .profile etc.

Configurations

Color schemes: Open the alacritty.yml file located at ~/.config/alacritty/alacritty.yml move to the colors: variable. Change the respective color values to your liking. You can also visit this wiki to copy some cool color values.

# Colors (Ayu Dark)
colors:
  # Default colors
  primary:
    background: '0x0A0E14'
    foreground: '0xB3B1AD'

  # Normal colors
  normal:
    black: '0x01060E'
    red: '0xEA6C73'
    green: '0x91B362'
    yellow: '0xF9AF4F'
    blue: '0x53BDFA'
    magenta: '0xFAE994'
    cyan: '0x90E1C6'
    white: '0xC7C7C7'

  # Bright colors
  bright:
    black: '0x686868'
    red: '0xF07178'
    green: '0xC2D94C'
    yellow: '0xFFB454'
    blue: '0x59C2FF'
    magenta: '0xFFEE99'
    cyan: '0x95E6CB'
    white: '0xFFFFFF'

Fonts: In the same config file, move to the font: variable, under normal: variable and uncomment family: append your favorite font name and style.

font:
  # Normal (roman) font face
  normal:
    # Font family
    #
    # Default:
    #   - (macOS) Menlo
    #   - (Linux) monospace
    #   - (Windows) Consolas
    family: 'SF Mono'

    # The `style` can be specified to pick a specific face.
    style: Regular

Font Size: In the config file, move to size: variable and change the value, make sure you add .0 decimal after the integer.

  # Point size
  size: 11.0

Line Height: In the config file, offset: variable have two sub variables x and y, where y can be called as line height and x as the letter spacing.

  offset:
    x: 0
    y: 0

Download

Alacritty is available for almost all the major platforms Linux, BSD, Windows, Mac etc. It is also available as bash file. You can download binaries and package files here.

Tmux

Something crucial that Alacritty does not have are tabs. We need tabs. We love leaving things on them tabs and CMD + T onto next ones.

The solution to tabs in Alacritty is Tmux. Tmux is command line based window and session manager. With its key bindings Tmux becomes very powerful. You can simultaneously open up multiple sessions and leave jobs running until you visit them next time.

Download

Tmux can be directly downloaded from github or you can install it via package manager.

Vim

At last, Vim. It needs no introduction. I do not use any vim plugins other than color scheme files.

My settings

I've spent a great amount of time researching configuration options, color schemes and other settings so you don't have to. I have saved all my settings on my github ap4gh/settings repository. Just copy-paste them at their respective places.

Troubleshooting

Some vim config may misbehave. But don't worry I am here to help you out. Just send a message on my twitter.

DEV Community: Amrit

More Than Code: 8 Lessons for Better Programming

1. Programming ≠ Coding

2. Small Interfaces Make Stronger Abstractions

3. Sometimes Copying Is Better Than Adding a Dependency

4. Errors Are Your Friends

5. Naming Matters More Than You Think

6. Use a Style Guide

7. Choose the Right Language for the Job

8. Know Your Ignorance

Final Thought

The Minimalist Terminal Setup

Alacritty

Configurations

Download

Tmux

Download

Vim

My settings

Troubleshooting