A talk about tools, simple behaviours, and actions we can do that can improve the effieciency of our work, which in return will save you time

1. Improving Your Efficiency
as a developer
July 17th 2019
Yousuf MJ

2. Overview
Going to discuss the various methods and tools that are available to us, that can be
used to speed up automate and improve our day to day work.
● What is efficiency
● Work environment
● Editor / IDE
● Tools / Plugins

3. What is efficiency?
● Efficiency (quality) Vs Productivity (quantity)
○ Productivity: how much output can be produced
○ Efficiency: maximise the quality of output while minimising input
● Productivity focuses on the amount of output units that can be completed by an
employee/company.
● Efficiency is about working smarter, get more done with less
● Can be unique to you
○ Disabilities
○ Requirements

4. ● We focus on improving our
products / projects but forget
about ourselves
● Let’s start thinking how we can
improve daily habits that in turn
improve our projects

5. Working Environment

6. Mouse & keyboards
● Benefits of having your own equipment
● Mutual benefits between gaming / programming gear
● Ergonomic
● Keyboards
○ Mx Cherry (no blues!!)
○ Switch types
○ Size, tenkeyless / full
● Mice
○ Weighted
○ Trackball
● Space between your mouse and keyboard

7. Screen layout
● Consistency across your applications and displays
● Treat your environment like you expect a good UX to be
● Maximise the space you have on screens ( application specific)
○ Terminal can be split into sections
○ Ide can be split into 2
○ Not having multiples apps floating on your screen
● Try using desktops (mac)
○ Consider how much you “hot desk”

9. Power of Colour and layout
● We can process colours and objects
slightly faster than we can words
● Stroop test
● Code colours
● Themes
● Fonts / ligatures
○ Fira Code

11. Terminal
● Iterm 2
● Hyper
● Oh my Z sh
○ Plugins
○ Themes (POWERLEVEL9K)
● Aliases
● Saving session
● Splitting sessions
● Themes (solorazed dark)
● Vim/emac/nano
○ Learn the syntax
○ Vim configs

13. VScode (other IDE / editors)
● Treat them as more than an editor
● Use built in tools and shortcuts
● Customize settings
● Use 3rd party plugins
● Snippets
● Icons / Themes
● Its a personal experience, let things suit the way you work

14. VSCode Plugins
● Linting
● Snippets
● Projects / repo
● Git
● Formatting
● Debug / Scratchpad
● Utility

15. General
Bookmarks
Code Spell Checker
Path Intellisense
Project Manager
Quokka.js
Settings Sync
Snippets
ES7 React/Redux/GraphQL/React-Native snippets
Jest Snippets
ES6 Snippets
Linting
Docker
ESLint
Markdown Preview Enhanced
markdownlint
tslint
Formatting
Highlight Matching Tag
Prettier
TODO Highlight
Trailing Spaces
Bracket Pair Colorizer
indent-rainbow
Git
GitLens
Git History

16. Browser
● Plugins
○ Password (lastpass)
○ Debuggers
○ Refresh
● Pinning tabs
● Grouped tabs
● Create search engines
● Group your favourites

17. Time Gif

18. Time
● How can we save time?
● Even fraction of a second is helpful
● Speeding up repeatable tasks can save x amount of time per week
● Identifying / navigating through code
● Shortcuts
○ Application level
○ Laptop level
● Internal Tools for repeated tasks
● Focus
○ “Power Hour”
○ Building at your disposal
● Cheatsheets

19. What are some useful examples you have?

20. Conclusion
● Sometimes we neglect everyday behaviours
● Treat work environment like you what you expect from a great UI/UX
● “I will do it later” mentality
● Additional coffee break each day
● Understand the capabilities of the tools at your fingertips
● Shortcuts immediately save you time