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Tom Chambrier
Tom Chambrier

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Code Fast in 2020

Now is the perfect time to break bad coding habits. Didn't bother to memorise your editor's shortcuts? Perhaps you have to look at the keyboard to type? All of these little things add up, impeding our state of flow and ultimately, our speed.

There is a good chance you have fewer professional demands on you during the holiday season. This means you can optimise for long term productivity at the expense of the short term.

Yes it will be frustrating to clean up your productivity hygiene. Touch typing symbols and numbers will be slow and tedious at first. Learning a vastly different editor such as Emacs or Vim will be tricky. However by the time you hit work again you will be flying.

I am becoming proficient in Spacemacs which is Vim inside of Emacs. The best tool I know for committing commands an shortcuts to memory is Anki. Think of Anki as intelligent flashcards. I construct my own deck of cards starting with the most frequently used keyboard bindings.

I am also becoming a better typist at Typing Club. Another site is typing.io. There you can find typing practice tailored to coders.

There is a confusing array of opinions on the internet about what really impacts your productivity. My advice is to ignore the noise and trust your own judgement. You know what is holding you back and the holiday period is the perfect time to put those little demons to bed.

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