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What's Been Your Biggest "Why Didn't Someone Tell Me" Discovery?

MurrayVarey on December 19, 2019

Have you ever made a discovery that blew your mind (in a good way)? Something that quickly solved a nagging problem, or perhaps something that you'd been doing wrong for years?

Tech and/or non-tech answers are all good.

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murrayvarey profile image
MurrayVarey

For me, it was discovering that Ctrl + Backspace deletes an entire word. It completely changed how I type.

I was so excited -- I told everyone I knew, thinking I would change the world ...
Only one person cared. But he still thanks me to this day.

Hopefully yours is better than mine!

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zerquix18 profile image
I'm Luis! \^-^/

I discovered it too! And now I use it a lot. Rather than correcting a mispelled word, I just delete it entirely and re-write it. It's way faster.

Also: CTRL+SHIFT+Left Arrow will select an entire word and CTRL+Left arrow will jump.

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murrayvarey profile image
MurrayVarey

Exactly, it means you stay in your typing flow. Before -- after hammering Backspace 12 times to delete a word -- I'd have forgotten what I was actually trying to say.

Also, it's really satisfying to see a typo just disappear, like you're swatting it away.

I love all those entire word select shortcuts. They save so much time.

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moopet profile image
Ben Sinclair
  • sidles up *

Psst. Have you tried vim?

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murrayvarey profile image
MurrayVarey

Ha! Not for a loooong time. Maybe I'm ready.

What I like most about CTRL + Backspace is that it works all over the place -- from Word to Google Docs. In theory my mum could use it (if she could be bothered).

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moopet profile image
Ben Sinclair

On the Mac I use for work, in iTerm it deletes the previous letter, same as ^H. In this textarea I'm using to type this reply it does... nothing.
That's partially just down to it the oddities of MacOS - a lot of keyboard shortcuts are weird on Mac, like ctrl/alt left and right arrow, or ctrl-R or alt-dot. You have to go through a process of setting it up on a new machine, because most of these are broken out the box.

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murrayvarey profile image
MurrayVarey

Ah, I'm not a Mac user, so that's good to know. According to @achu it's ⌘ + Delete on a Mac.

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moopet profile image
Ben Sinclair

Yeah, that does nothing on mine either :)

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murrayvarey profile image
MurrayVarey

Oh dear. This might be why I failed to change the world.

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lifesandwich profile image
LifeSandwich

on MacOS its OPTION + DELETE

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moopet profile image
Ben Sinclair

As I mentioned, that does nothing on my Mac.

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achu profile image
Achu Abebe

On Mac, that's ⌘ + Delete

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jrwren profile image
Jay R. Wren

that does teh whole line. option+delete does a word.

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kuerbisulme profile image
Simon

Wow, I didn't know that. I used CTRL + Shift + Left + Backspace 🤦‍♂️ Thanks for that!

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murrayvarey profile image
MurrayVarey

Happy to help!

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codemouse92 profile image
Jason C. McDonald

I love that too, although I too often forget it's there.

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vinmay profile image
vinmay

I found out that Ctrl + Shift + T opens the windows that you had previously closed. As you go on doing it, it will go back in history sequentially and open the windows you had closed in the same way. I was really excited when I discovered it !

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murrayvarey profile image
MurrayVarey

Ah man, I could have done with this one yesterday! Thank you!

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peter profile image
Peter Kim Frank • Edited

When using your internet browser, using CMD + L jumps your focus to the address bar. It's really useful, especially when referencing information within the current tab while typing into the address bar.

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thatblairguy profile image
That Blair Guy

On Mac,Cmd + L will take you to the address bar. But beware, if you switch platforms a lot, WindowsKey + L locks the system and you have to login again to unlock. (On Windows, use Alt + D.)

Context, using an external keyboard, the Command and Windows keys are in the same location....

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imcheesecake profile image
Freddie

F6 does the same thing!

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murrayvarey profile image
MurrayVarey

Awesome, I didn't know this. Will have to give it a try.

I'm becoming a keyboard shortcut nut. It makes talking to normal people quite challenging ...

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pareshjoshi profile image
Paresh

I used F6 for this.

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damjand profile image
Damjan Dimitrov

That dragging the middle mouse button in VSCode lets you add multiple cursors on different lines and/or select just a portion of a text on multiple lines at the same time.

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murrayvarey profile image
MurrayVarey

Yeah, that's a nice one. Did you see @peacefullatom 's Visual Studio Productivity post yesterday? Well worth a read.

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peacefullatom profile image
Yuriy Markov

Here's one more trick. Select portion of text and press Ctrl + Shift + L - this will select all fragments within opened document, this you can edit them all at once 🙃

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chayandatta profile image
Chayan Datta • Edited

For me, when writing something -> to select more than one word or line, without dragging the mouse pointer the whole time,

just keep the typing bar on starting point and click the ending point with a shift

it just changes everything

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murrayvarey profile image
MurrayVarey

Did I know this? Honestly, I'm not sure. I'm certainly going to start using it now. Thanks!

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thatblairguy profile image
That Blair Guy

Huge thing for me was learning how to put the output from the command line directly to the clipboard without going through an intermediate temp file.

Windows: some_command | clip
MacOS: some_command | pbcopy

(For Linux, I believe xclip is popular, but I'm not completely sure.)

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amehmeto profile image
amehmeto

The discovery that I could escape the debugging hell with TDD.

blog.imagicle.com/test-diven-devel...

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murrayvarey profile image
MurrayVarey

Great link -- that really lays TDD out clearly. It can be a tricky sell sometimes.

Out of interest, was your TDD discovery a lightbulb moment or more of a slow realisation?

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amehmeto profile image
amehmeto • Edited

A wonderful lightbulb. Up to this day, I don't understand why it is not taught from day 1.
I also don't understand why it's not the standard way of doing code''.

Sure there's no one way of coding, but from a junior perspective, TDD is so structuring.

'' I guess that's because developers darwinism : only those who learned to love debugging survived to become professionals.

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murrayvarey profile image
MurrayVarey

Up to this, I don't understand why it is not taught from day 1

It may well come. I have a similar feeling about source control. Who wouldn't want a great whack off undo button from day one?

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Heiker • Edited

Navigating the shell command history with the arrow keys, I was so happy when I read a tweet about the Ctrl-r shorcut. It was even better when I found out fzf had a keybinding that does the same thing.

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kuerbisulme profile image
Simon

Finding out that you can assign an alias to search engines in Chrome and use tab in the address bar to switch to "search mode" was pretty nice. In combination with Ctrl + L I focus the address bar, type yt, press tab, enter my search term, press enter and Chrome takes me to youtube which then will present the search results :)

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murrayvarey profile image
MurrayVarey

That's a nifty trick. I'll give that a whirl!

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robinscodeongit profile image
robin

For me the most recent thing was CTE's (Common Table Expressions), best way to make SQL readable, instead of ugly encapsulation of every sub select you can give it nice names and easy structure.
here an example:

with my_cte as
(
select id, t.* from some.table t where
),
2nd_select as
(
select fk_id as id, t.* from awesome.table t
)
Select * from my_cte a
Inner join 2nd_select b on a.id = b.id

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kavanozkafa profile image
Şammas Çölkesen

I switch web pages A LOT . so for me , it was CTRL + tab . It switchs open tabs.Also CTLR + W which is closes window.

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phiter profile image
Phiter Fernandes

Oh, I use that a lot too. You can also use CTRL + 1 to 9 to switch tabs.

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Adam Brandizzi

It is indispensable, as well as Ctrl+Shift+Tab to go to the previous tab.

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Abraham Brookes

Being able to load keymappings into VScode - I come from Notepad++ and love my ctrl+d to duplicate and ctrl+shift+up/dn arrows to move lines about. If you're using VScode and you've come from another editor, check the plugins! There's very likely a keymapping plugin to make the whole way more familiar.

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Carlos

This is what enabled me to move to vscode without losing my mind. Moved from Sublime and moved all my keymappings over

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Jennifer Bradford

Windows button and L locks your computer and ctrl alt left turns your screen rightways back up when your toddler button mashed your laptop screen sideways

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murrayvarey profile image
MurrayVarey

"Keyboard Shortcuts for When Your Toddler Button Mashes Your Laptop" could be an entire genre in itself!

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jappyjan profile image
jappyjan

I just found out that there is a good alternative to jira worth to look at... Even worth to switch to!

Clubhouse.io

Always thought there is no such thing as a good and complete alternative to the whole atlassian family which I never quite liked...

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Lathanao

For me, that was the reverse-i-search in linux terminal. Ctrl + r then type a key word.

E.g.
Ctrl + r then type php, will find in my history: /bin/systemctl restart php-fpm.service

I use it dozens of times every day.

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antonellopasella profile image
Antonello Pasella

The real mean of “session” in sessionStorage.
It’s not about “session” but “tab”.

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cydstumpel profile image
Cyd

Using Cmd + ctrl and the arrows to move an entire line of code (Or selected text) in atom, I believe it’s alt/option in vscode. I always blow interns’ minds with that haha.

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dana94 profile image
Dana Ottaviani

Ctrl + f to search for word(s) on a page. I actually learned about this on a food blog. I thought it was old news but I find myself still telling people about it.

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Evaldas Buinauskas

Being able to position cursor on multiple lines at the same column position and then type in those lines. It's been a life saver.

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Kostia Palchyk

Vim. Vimium for chrome. Vimperator for FF. Vim for VS Code 🙌

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chayandatta profile image
Chayan Datta

yea sorry, I meant shift