Here's something that sucks: Plug in external monitor to laptop (Mac OS X Leopard in my case). Arrange your windows to have the IDE on one screen and browser on another. (Etc etc. Resize, rearrange, fuss, fuss, fuss.) Unplug monitor to run to a meeting, or whatever. Goto 1. I'd like to replace step 2 with "computer remembers exactly...
I am a solo dev building a WinForm App, C# & .Net 3.5, in VS2008. It is, essentially, a glorified data entry and retrieval application. My question is, Is it normal to spend %60 + of my time on "design"? The UI, placing all the controls, naming the controls something intuitive, setting properties on the UI controls(Modifier, onFocus...
We will probably be moving within a year, so we have to make some decisions regarding office layout. At the moment, our company is basically one big office. When our developers can't bother to be disturbed at all, we all have our own headphones to mute the outside world. Still, it seems a lot of people feel that private offices are n...
Recently, I've added regular exercise to my life. It has given me more overall energy and I have been more productive at work. However, I have also heard that meditation can help you be more focused, and, consequently, more productive. There is a lot of different advice out there, but it is difficult to tell which route go: music, silenc...
DUPLICATE: Best filemanager for developer I don’t like the windows explorer. It lakes several important and productive features for developer. I personally have tried 2 UltraExplorer and CubicExploere. Like both I now only use CubicExplorer because it is being actively maintained, and find it more stable. What other File Managers are...
I go through phases where I spend far too much time stressing out over the best way to program something instead of just programming the damn thing - a trait I don't think is uncommon among programmers. So, does anyone have techniques for psyching oneself out so one can relax and let oneself code something which, while not 100% perfect c...
We are planning to adapt Professional Development Ladder (PDL) approach to accelerate and structure professional growth of engineers. This approach is introduced by Construx Software and popularized by Steve McConnell in his Professional Software Development book. Can you please answer to the next questions: Do (or did) you use this a...
I find that I am cutting and pasting a LOT when I program. For example, method, variable and class names are things I regularly cut/paste. I do use "ctrl+space" after typing part of a word to autocomplete them or popup intellisense when there's duplicates found. But just for straight copy/pasting do you guys have any good shortcuts/tr...
I read an article about activity track. Its suppose to be a great way to show us are wasting time. So what the best and free tools to track internet usage and desktop application usage? ...
I just found out that my workplace has installed software that analyzes source check-ins for such things as who checks in the most lines, when they mostly do their check-ins, which files have the most changes, etc. I'm a bit concerned that this has something to do with the economic situation, and they are looking for a way to measure "d...
For me its accomplishing something by the end of the day. I've been in IT for a few years now and I've noticed that the thing that keeps my morale up is being able to say "I accomplished something" at the end of each day. I've found that accomplishing something is more important that my rate of pay or the tools and technology I use. If...
Argggg!, I'm trying to force myself to use as little mouse as possible and I can't find the answer to this simple short-cut anywhere! Here the the steps: Open up Visual Studio. Open any C# file (or any code file I believe) Point your mouse anywhere on the window/file. Right Click Is there a shortcut key for this so I don't have to m...
I find it kinda funny that if you are asked how long you would estimate to perform a specific task, your answer is always the amount of time you have to finish the task – maybe with 1-2 additional days. Does anyone else experience this? Furthermore, why is the pressure always on the developer? Yes, he gave a false estimation, which can...
I'm using Visual Studio C++ 2008 Express to learn a native API for a new project. What I'm wondering is: what productivity features present in the full version that you take for granted are missing from Visual Studio Express? I'm not referring to large "paid" features like MFC support - I'm thinking of small features (sometimes provided...
I work in an environment where, for historical reasons, we are using a hodgepodge of custom utility classes, most of which were written before STL arrived on the scene. There are many reasons why I think it is a good idea to at least write new code using STL, but the main one is that I believe it increases programmer productivity. Unfort...
As a programmer I spend a lot of hours at the keyboard and I've been doing it for the last 12 years more or less. If there's something I've never gotten used to during all this time is these annoying and almost unconscious constant micro-interruptions I experience while coding, due to some of the most common code editing tasks. Things li...
I was originally going to frame this question around TextMate, which is by all accounts an amazing editor, but only available on OSX. I was curious how those who have spent time learning to use TextMate efficiently deal with the situation where they have to edit on a non-OSX platform. But it's really a more general question. How do pe...
What are the some of the PowerShell tips & tricks that you use to increase your productivity as a .NET developer? ...
I know the question about measuring developer performance has been asked to death, but please bear with me. I know the age old debate about how you cannot measure performance of developers, but the reality is, at our company there is a "need" to do that one way or another. I work for a relatively small company (small in terms of develop...
My company is floating the idea of extending our version numbers another notch (e.g. from major.minor.servicepack to major.minor.servicepack.customerfix) to allow for customer specific fixes. This strikes me as a bad idea on the surface as my experience is the more branching a product does (and I believe the customer fixes are branches ...