The Productive Programmer — Key Takeaways From a Great Book

janac
11 min readMar 25, 2021

Intro

Chapter 1

  • Naming something lets you identify it more easily

Part 1: Mechanics

The tools that could help any power-user.

Chapter 2: Acceleration

  • The longer a list of applications, the less useful it becomes
  • Use a launcher instead, i.e. SpotLight, Launchy, Alfred
  • I prefer a custom launcher like Alfred to Spotlight because of its enhanced functionality
  • Avoid using finder as much as possible, and prefer the cmd line or launcher
  • In Windows, use tab to autocomplete file paths in explorer
  • Use cmd + shift + G in Finder to use tab auto-complete functionality
  • You don’t need to use terminal/finder exclusively — you can drag a folder from Finder into the cmd-line to mimic a cd command
  • Ctrl+f2 highlights menu, press a letter to jump to that menu item
  • Ctrl+f8 highlights services (clock side of the menu bar)
  • Use a clipboard manager because context switching eats time…

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janac

Most of my writing is about software. I enjoy summarizing and analyzing books and self-help videos. I am senior software consultant at LazerTechnologies.com.