Variations of this question have been asked before and sometimes it's even taken for granted, so let me be very clear exactly what I'm looking for. A lot has happened to has made programming easier, but I'm not sure if the languages are actually better. For evidence we have a study, showing TCL comparable to Python. And there is the fam...
Practical uses of virtualization in software development are about as diverse as the techniques to achieve it. Whether running your favorite editor in a virtual machine, or using a system of containers to host various services, which use cases have proven worth the effort and boosted your productivity, and which ones were a waste of tim...
It's no secret that having to wait while coding breaks you out of "the zone". Even worse, you might get sucked in by some activity (like SO) and suddenly realize you've just wasted yet another half an hour. Long compile times are often mentioned in this context, but there are many other things with the same effect - programs that open sl...
I'm looking into Productivity tools for developing in C# / Visual Studio 2008 (pr0) and developing web apps (not using MVC). Anything from favourite visual studio shortcuts to external tools and plug-ins. ...
Actually I am interested in hearing others experience on this subject: Time wasters. By saying that, I mean the things that are a trap to fall into during the development phase and let us developers lose a ridiculous amount of time - which ultimately does not deliver any useful output in the end. Here are some examples of things I have...
It's fairly well recognized that some programmers are up to 10 times more productive than others. Joel mentions this topic on his blog. There is a whole blog devoted to the idea of the "10x productive programmer". In years since the original study, the general finding that "There are order-of-magnitude differences among prog...
Lately I found myself having a lot of downtime at work. Unfortunately my current company doesn't have a "research project" policy so I can't put too much effort on a side project (or I may never finish it). So what I did so far is: Learning a new Framework Browsing Stack Overflow What are your solutions to manage not to procastinat...
In my team I have some developers that always have two or three IM windows open. The majority of these windows are not related with the project where they are nor with asking or offering programming help. I also use IM and, off course, some of my "talks" are not related with the job. But I feel that when I am using IM my productivity dr...
I know the question is very subjective. But I cannot form the question in a much more better manner. I would appreciate some guidance. I often as a developer feel how easier it would have been for me if I could have some tools for doing some reasonably complex task on a log file , or a set of source files, or some data set etc. Clearly...
The goal of IDEs is increase productivity. They do a great job at that. Refactoring, navigation, inline documentation, auto completion help increase productivity immensely. But: Every tool is a weapon. The very same IDE helps to produce chunk code. Some IDE features are an invitation to produce bad code: code generation, code formatting...
Hi all, We work with bugzilla. Whenever you need to query a ticket you just need to know the bugid (integer) and you simply prepend this to it. http://<bugzilla_server>/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=<bug_id> Suppose I have a bug link which looks like this 777. If I select and copy this it is preserved on the pasteboard so wh...
What is the keyboard shortcut to get CodeRush to do the #1 suggested fix for the situation? Do I really have to hover over the problem long enough to get the ellipse to show up and then pick a choice? Also is there a way to jump to the next problem area? ...
Is there a setup of windows and menus that proves especially useful while coding? For example on my laptop I hide the toolbar so I have more editor space. I use ctrl-F7 to open views so I don't need to have them visible all the time. Note: the PHP tag is only because I use PHP. This is not a PDT or PHP specific question. ...
How could a (Windows) desktop application be created to monitor the amount of time spent on a particular website? My first idea was to play with the Host file to intercept requests, log, and proxy. This feels a bit clunky; and I suspect my program would look like malware. I feel like there is a smarter way? Any ideas? ...
Do you know typing tutorials / learing software specifically geared at people who have been hunting and pecking (that is, typing with two fingers) for years? My impression is that most tutorials focus on teaching you where the keys are. This is absolutely useless and mindnumbingly boring for people who have already been typing for year...
Possible Duplicate: What tricks do you use to get yourself in the zone? I am most productive when there are no distractions and absolute silence! But unfortunately with family this is never possible. I have heard that most programmers work early in the morning or late at night when it is silent. I was listening to Jason Fried f...
Is there something like CodeRush for Java? ...
My bosses are old-school IBM'ers. To save development time, I've mentioned a few open-source projects that we could undoubtedly take advantage of in some new web applications we are building. They are always hesitant and uneasy about using anything like this (even jQuery). I think the biggest problem they have is that they feel it is ...
I would like to have a central place for every type of notification. I'm talking anything and everything. Here are a few example events: Receive a new email Unable to ping a server New Instant Message received Appointments (eg 3pm Dentist appointment) Webcam detects motion at front door Temperature outside is below freezing Allergy l...
I have recently upgraded to VS2010, and overall I must say that I'm very impressed. I used to use ReSharper when working with VS2008, but I have found that many of it's features have been incorporated into VS2010. One of the features I like the most is the CTRL+, command which lets you navigate to a class or method by writing part of it...