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MurrayVarey
MurrayVarey

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

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.

Latest comments (52)

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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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lathanao profile image
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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chayandatta profile image
Chayan Datta

yea sorry, I meant shift

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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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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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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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abrahambrookes profile image
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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craicerjack profile image
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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buinauskas profile image
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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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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jbradford77 profile image
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!