I'm trying to improve my working environment and I'm still searching for that perfect keyboard that practically types bug-free code all by itself. At the moment I'm using a Logitech Wave for my Windows need and an Apple Wireless Keyboard (the one without a numeric keypad) when doing OS X stuff. I'm quite happy with the Logitech Wave but ...
I have had horrible procrastination habits since gradeschool, and now that I'm in college, I still am having a hard time beating this bad habit. I find myself easily distracted from doing real "work" and find myself wandering off doing something else that I enjoy more. Tell me how you personally beat procrastination; or share your strug...
When programming how often should I take a break? How long should that break be? What should I do and avoid doing during that time? ...
I see so many people using their laptops on the plane. Half of them watch movies/listen to music/use it for entertainment. But then there's the other half that has spreadsheets/documents/planners/productivity software opened up. I can't help but wonder how do they get anything done in such an uncomfortable environment? Note: I'm talk...
Last year we were focused on improve our technical capacities and leveraging our knowledge of various architectures and frameworks and methodologies. This year (August mark the start of a new accounting year) we need to improve our productivity. By this I don't means we need to get more KLOCs per month per programmer. What we need is t...
Every week I put up a bunch of .jpg screen captures on my project's wiki to show the difference between this week's status and last weeks. The files are called things like ProgrammerAtasks_current.jpg and ProgrammerBtasks_lastweek.jpg so there is a pair of *_current.jpg and *_lastweek.jpg for each status. Each week I delete the old *_l...
If you're doing some textual manipulation of a file/files, at what point do you decide to automate the process (using your favorite scripting language or writing a macro in a tool) ? Is it after a certain number of repetitions or based on the likelihood you'll need to repeat the process ? Is it productive to automate a task if creating...
This is a follow up to my previous question about renaming a bunch of files Once I have my renamed files I need to add them to my project wiki page. This is a fairly repetitive manual task, so I guess I could script it but I don't know where to start. The process is: Got to appropriate page on the wiki for each team member (Developer...
For all my present Diff / Merge needs I'm using [Beyond Compare][1]; when I decided to buy a license for it I tried other similar tools, both payware and freeware. Now BC is at version 3, and I think it's a great tool... but what are your experience in this field? Do you think there is something better? And what are the feature you like...
Every day after I finish a hard days coding (or an easy days youtubing) I log work done against the tickets I have been (ostentibly) working on. Then Mr. Manager takes this oh-so-useful information and builds a burn-down chart. This then allows us to track how 'complete' we are in the overall scope of things. It also allows us to measure...
I'd be interested to hear peoples thoughts about the productivity gains (or lackof) from moving from a dual to triple monitor setup. I find a multi-monitor setup indispensable both in the office and at home (for hobby development). Since I start dividing my time 50/50 between development and management I'm beginning to feel that I'm doi...
I'm always on the lookout for tools to help make me more efficient, so I was wondering what kinds of tools, other than IDEs/text editors (these have been covered in a few questions), that people use to make themselves more productive. Here's a list of the tools I currently find useful: Launchy - application launcher, to make launching...
If you had $150 to spend on one or more developer tools or utilities, what would they be? Please list in shopping list form: $25 SuperMerge (link) $49 MegaGridPro (link) Note: I'm looking for products which are for sale here, so please don't list free software. And, no, donating to an open source project doesn't make it non-free, at ...
What tools do you use to boost up your application development? ...
What would you consider the ideal computer configuration for software development? Also, what upgrades would you look at for a development computer? ...
In reference to Joel's 'smart and gets things done' idea... How do I improve my 'gets things done' ability? I'm not super smart, but working on being smarter than I am. Attending user groups, reading blogs and books, asking and answering on forums etc. But I'm having trouble with the 'get things done' part. I'm OK at overcoming 'in...
In my office email is one of the primary means of communication. Developers are spread around the world, so you can't always meet up and time differences mean that phone/VOIP is not always practical. I find email hard to manage. You end up with hundreds/thousands of emails in various threads. You get CC'ed on stuff that is of marginal i...
I've seen different program managers write specs in different format. Almost every one has had his/her own style of writing a spec. On one hand are those wordy documents which given to a programmer are likely to cause him/her missing a few things. I personally dread the word documents spec...I think its because of my reading style...I a...
Every programming job I've had has required me to track my hours, entering them into a system once a week. I've never been good at it. For the past few years, I've been running Timesnapper* on all my machines, and on the night before hours were checked I'd slog through the records and painstakingly enter the hours in. The alternative, o...
As developers advance in seniority, they are more frequently the "go-to" person for questions from business people, other developers, and other teams. As we know, interruptions have a devastating impact on programming productivity. How do people deal with this? Do you give up on the idea of writing code yourself and see your job as a ...