Ask HN: What software do you depend on for day-to-day tasks?

16 points by sc4th1s ↗ HN
I just started creating a list and I'm sure there are some hidden gems:

rip ripgrep fzf tmux

21 comments

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My organizer: it is how I think & keep track of things, efficiently. For me, like GTD only very efficient and ~"infinitely" nestable & fast. I wrote it because it is what I wanted. AGPL. Details under "About" at: http://onemodel.org
I try to depend on as little as possible.

A text editor & access to some sort of programming language. If my terminal dies I want minimum downtime. If my laptop dies, ditto.

That's not to say tools aren't useful but relying on them is trouble.

The same reason I leave my shovel and rake in the garage when I do lawn work.
Atom, Google Chrome, Google Inbox, GitHub, Whatsapp, Spotify.
For dev tasks nothing fancy -- a terminal, browser, and Sublime mostly.

For non-dev tasks, I spend a ton of time reading with a Safari Books subscription, Instapaper, and the Kindle app for iOS.

For business tasks, I use Reminders.app as a tickler file (GTD) and Due for OS X / iOS. Google Keep is pretty nice for re-usable checklists.

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On my local machine for normal work stuff: Phpstorm, git, rsync, vim, os x terminal, chrome, firefox, omnifocus, sequel pro, photoshop, 1Password, etc

Less common stuff, but thing I install on any new computer (os x) - I think they are all from the App Store for a few dollars each:

Color picker (puts an icon in bar at top of screen, i click it then click anywhere else and it puts the colour hex code in the clipboard.

CommandQ - makes me hold down command + q to quit an app. I hate the default OS X way of clicking command + q to quit an app. Not from app store - https://clickontyler.com/commandq/

Flycut - remembers 100 clipboard items. Cmd+shift+v, then i can 'scroll' through 100 previous clipboard items with left/right arrow keys.

Disk inventory X - see what kind of files are taking up space

Skitch - for quick screenshots with nice annotations (from evernote)

Apart from sublime text and terminal for work and a browser, there is a nice piece of software called pomello. It works with trello and essentially builds a pomodoro timer on top of it. It helps me very much with getting things done.
Webstrorm with lot of live templates + terminal with lot of aliases. Related files backed up to Dropbox again via an alias.
Total Commander (ghisler.com)
Chrome, cygwin and notepad++.
ssh wc gdrive rasync htop nslookup mtr ripgrep byobu apt-get ;)
Search and Replace for Windows (that nifty little tool with blue binoculars icon), HxD - Hexeditor, Sublime Text, Visual Studio Express (web and desktop), Beyond Compare, MS Paint, GIMP, sometimes Inkscape, Calculator, Glary Utilities (This was a lifesaver when I accidentally deleted source copy instead of last modified backup copy of code I had written all day. I learnt a lesson - never do file delete at 2 AM when tired and sleepy). All these are pinned to the task bar, except calc which I can just start->run.
It's silly, but after trying all kinds of different todo systems, the most effective I've found is an "Ideas" Google Doc. Psychologically, I think my mind prefers that the doc is a list of ideas that are optional rather than a list of mandatory todos.
If your day to day tasks refer to things not necessarily related to programming, see my question from yesterday (loads of links in the replies): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12794292

For work related things (I'm an embedded developer, with some side projects, work-work is on Windows with some Linux servers, personal stuff I use a combination of Ubuntu and OSX):

  - GitLab CE (self hosted)
  - Jira (self hosted)
  - DokuWiki
  - PyCharm
  - Eclipse
  - MobaXterm (Windows terminal program)
  - SourceTree (Windows/OSX Git GUI)
  - tmux
  - vim
  - jupyter notebook (self hosted)
  - any.do (migrating away from this)
  - Realterm (terminal emulator for serial comms)
  - HipChat