Why I’m Glad I Switched from QWERTY to Colemak
I recently made the switch from a QWERTY keyboard to Colemak, and I wanted to share my experience so far.
Author: Dan Kelch
Interactively Pipe Commands Together with the Ultimate Plumber
Recently, I discovered a new tool that quickly became an integral part of my daily development workflow. It’s called up – the Ultimate Plumber. It allows for interactive chaining of pipe outputs. This is a good choice for anyone who frequently pipes the output of awk, sed, grep, and other command line utilities together.
Level up your PostgreSQL Skill with Lateral Joins
PostgreSQL’s lateral joins have a lot of uses. One of my favorites is the ability to reuse calculations in a query. Before I discovered lateral joins, I would either copy calculations throughout the query or use subqueries. Neither of these approaches is ideal because they make the query much more difficult to read—and nearly impossible […]
Six Command Line Tools I Use Every Day
Knowing how to use the command line–and how to use it well–is often a necessary skill. I love working on the command line, and I love discovering new tools that I can use. Here are a few that I use every day, all of which have greatly boosted my productivity.
Eliminate Circular Dependencies from Your JavaScript Project
Circular dependencies (also known as cyclic dependencies) occur when two or more modules reference each other. This could be a direct reference (A -> B -> A): // file a.ts import { b } from 'b'; ... export a; // file b.ts import { a } from 'a'; ... export b; or indirect (A -> […]
Avoid Careless Production Mistakes with Custom Scripts
In the wise words of @stahnma, “Everybody has a testing environment. Some people are lucky enough to have a totally separate environment to run production in.” Thankfully, the project I’m working on has multiple environments: production (the most recently-released version), staging (for pre-release testing), dev (for dev team use and testing), and multiple review apps […]
Incrementally Building My Own Code Health Tool
Recently, I’ve been looking for ways to improve the code health of a project I’m working on. It’s a pretty big team, so things are moving quickly. While the codebase is in good shape now, little things can quickly spiral out of control.
Building Your Own VS Code Extension for a Mac Touch Bar
Visual Studio Code is an excellent editor, with a ton of room for customization. As a recent convert from Emacs, I appreciate the ability to customize my editor through the form of extensions. Creating an extension is quite simple, if none that fit your needs are available in the marketplace.
Git Good: Improve Your Version Control Skills
Git is a fantastic tool, used by millions of people around the world. While Git GUIs can be useful tools, using git on the command line has a higher ceiling for productivity, especially when one can use aliases or refer to their own command history. Today, I’m going to go over a few Git features […]
Improving Command Line Productivity with GNU Readline
I spend a lot of my day working on the command line, from file navigation to version control to remote work on servers over SSH, and anywhere in between. I’ve found that even small improvements to my workflow significantly add up over time to provide big productivity boosts.