DEV Community: Avinash Tiwari

De-cluttering your emails

Avinash Tiwari — Mon, 09 Oct 2023 05:59:03 +0000

Does this big number in your inbox bug you a lot, like me? Do you find it difficult to find the emails when you need them the most?

If yes, then I'll let you know a simple trick to organize your inbox to completely transform your use of it.

I personally, like my things organized, but, my Gmail Inbox says otherwise. Hence, I decided to work on it and organize it. And in the journey of doing so, I stumbled upon a nifty little feature in Gmail called Labels.

It is quite easy to manage and group some similar types of emails under labels. By doing that, it becomes quite easy to manage emails and get to that one email, that you wanted to find.

Suppose you wanted to give a category to a particular email sender called, xyz@example.com. then you just have to follow these steps in order to make sure that future emails from this sender will go under your custom label.

Click on the search bar gear icon.

You will be greeted with a popup of advance search.

We can use this to search all of those particular types of emails. For example:- in the from section add the sender's email ID. In the Has the words section you can add any text of your liking.
Hit search and check whether it is filtering out all the required emails to which you wanted to attach a custom label.
If this is the case, then just click on the gear icon again in the search bar and click on create filter

After that you will be greeted with a complete filter creation menu.

You have to click on the apply the label option and select any pre-existing label, if any. If not, then just click on Create a new label.
You can name the label, add background color, and foreground color, and even nest the label.
After you are done selecting the label, you can check the last option in the menu called Also apply filter to matching conversations. This will make sure that all the existing emails with the same criteria are attached to the same label.
You can fiddle around other options in the menu as well. Like marking an email as read by default, deleting an email automatically, and many other things.
Just click Create Filter and you are done.
In order to see all the filters you have created, just go to your Gmail all settings and you can see an option called Filters and Blocked Addresses

You will then be able to see all your created labels right under your sidebar. Clicking on which will filter the emails instantly for you.

Not to mention, a cute little label will be assigned to the email in your inbox. Like this,

I hope you all will follow these steps to manage your thousands and thousands of emails.

Let me know in the comment if you are stuck anywhere.
Follow for more such tips and tricks😉.

Perform cumbersome repetitive terminal commands with few clicks

Avinash Tiwari — Fri, 06 Oct 2023 06:42:27 +0000

Being a developer, I know that everyone loves to be in the terminal all the time 😍. I mean who doesn't like that blackish background with a blinking little cursor, the hostname in green color, and those sweet sweet commands! (Uh oh! I think romantic me has kicked in 😅😬 Back to the topic). So, I know how cool it looks to be using the terminal all the time, but we hate it switching to the terminal for some basic regular tasks 😓, like starting the server, deploying stuff, checking the logs, etcetra etcetra...😪

What if I tell you, we can have a button to make it all possible with just a single click? How cool it will be to just click on the button and woosh! It's done!😉 Okay, if you've imagined till this way...let's add some more spice to it! What if I tell you, you can use it directly using your favorite text editor? You guessed it right! VS Code!

"Enough of the showreel Avinash! Let's get to the business🙄" - Okay Okay, so let's learn what things you'll need to do in order to have the same spell in your system!

VSCode extension Quick Task
tasks.json file in the directory
So, let me tell you the spell on how to do this magic trick on your system, trust me it's really very simple😉.

Go to the extension section of VSCode and search for "Quick Task". Install it

We now, need to create some tasks in VSCode for the extension to pick them up. So, open the command palette by clicking the combination of Ctrl (Command for Mac) + Shift + P.
Type in "task" and select "Configure Default Build Task".

You'll see an option to create a custom task, select it.

You need to tell the type of command the task will perform. We can choose "Others" in this case, as we are going to automate some shell commands.

Now, a file named tasks.json will be created containing all the tasks. You can add label, command and leave the type to be shell.

Enter the shell command you want to automate and it's done! Reload your VSCode for the extensions to pick up the tasks from tasks.json.
You'll see an icon in the bottom bar to open all the tasks available in your workspace. It will also, show you tasks from package.json file, if you are using javascript.

You must be thinking, "Avinash, what if the command requires an input? How to do it then?🤔". Don't worry, I have got you covered!😉

We just need to specify the inputs and use them in our command in tasks.json. It will prompt to take input while running and performing a task.

Here is an example of such a task:-

This example will ask for a commit message from you when you run this specific task. So, you can automate some repetitive tasks that you do daily with these easy steps. Thanks for reading.

Let me know about any shortcomings in the comments below!

Stay tuned for more such tips & tricks!

A cleaner way of writing code

Avinash Tiwari — Fri, 06 Oct 2023 06:35:00 +0000

I always have those Ahaa! moments, whenever I start making sense of something, I learn theoretically.

I am lucky to be in such an environment to experiment with my day-to-day work, so I can add that extra delta to my learning each day.

One such moment was to start using a class-based approach!

I mean we have been taught about Object-oriented programming since we started gaining consciousness in IT!

We mug things up for the interview...
"Encapsulation is object's attributes and methods under a single roof...blah blah blah"

But, to use it thoroughly, in our day-to-day life is missed by many of us engineers.

I asses a lot of engineers when I get a chance to take interviews, and I feel that not many are using the class-based approach, which in my opinion might make the thinking around the project much richer and code quality much "sexier".

And of course, a lot less work!

A few things I feel have improved in my code quality after writing in classes are:

I can think beforehand about the business logic thoroughly before writing code
Helps in structuring and refactoring the codebase
I can save myself from writing lots and lots of code, as I can just extend classes
Can follow DRY(don't repeat yourself) and hence, saves a lot of time

For Java people, it is quite mandatory to go with that approach. But, I urge all the other, Python, and Node developers to start writing in a class-based manner.

I promise you! You'll come and thank me!

Quickly search commands in VSCode terminal

Avinash Tiwari — Fri, 06 Oct 2023 06:31:58 +0000

Friday Tip! 🔥
Are you tired of smashing that up-and-down arrow when trying to get the command you want to execute? 😢
Tired of writing that same favorite command again and again? 😓

The solution sits right in the tool, that you use. You just need to enable some magic strokes, with your magic fingers in order to make it go smooth 🏂 (see video 👀 ).

After enabling the shortcut, you will be able to scroll through the history of commands in VSCode 🚀

Pro Tip: If you still wanna stick with the terminal, you can do a reverse search by hitting ctrl+r. Saves a lot of time ⏳

Ngrok alternative built-in in VSCode

Avinash Tiwari — Fri, 06 Oct 2023 06:24:50 +0000

Yet another great release by #vscode 🚀
Port-forwarding is here, to showcase your work temporarily to the clients and managers now 🎉 😉
There is no need to install ngrok now
Here is a quick snippet, on how to achieve this 👀