Ask HN: Programs that saved you 100 hours?

Can you copy the description from that old thread into your post, so that people don't need to click through for the full context? I think it'll still be editable at this point

BeyondCompare (cited in the original thread), especially the folder comparison feature. Saved my sanity when our team's shared directory stopped syncing silently on my laptop and I had to figure out which files I needed to sync manually.

WizTree (https://antibody-software.com/web/software/software/wiztree-...) is a freeware Windows utility (man, typing this took me back to 1997) that lets you quickly see which files are hogging your disk space. Think "df GUI for Windows". Especially useful to track down large application files hidden in the depths of system folders.

WorkOS (https://workos.com/) if you need to support single sign-on (SSO) for your app.

SSO is free, and they offer other enterprise-focused features, like directory sync and audit trails.

(mine are all not particularly new)

ShareX (windows): screenshot > optionally annotate > upload to ftp > copy url to clipboard

But I can also paste from the clipboard:

- if it's a file: upload to ftp, copy link to clipboard

- if it's text: upload to ftp, custom URL makes it load in my org-mode or markdown web-render

I spent roughly three months late last year working on my workflow. Figuring out what I was good at, not so good at, and what I'd forever found impossible to do without fear of punishment or shame. Slowly, I learned how I worked best and leveraged these lessons in design of the new work flow. Of course, the solution was far simpler than before. The lessons were often exactly what was exhaustively explained in books about habit and routine.

Anyway, my workflow is centered around directories and files accessed from Sublime. Every directory is major subject area or project. One directory is the Control Center - filled with documents that drive my work day and planning. Things like Work Journal, Weekly, Master, Research Depot, etc., are all referenced every day - sometimes dozens of times.

Table Editor package for Sublime to create logs, reference tables, checklists (option v = √). Also great for tracking my micro workouts - calisthenics every hour to keep the pump bumping.

Code folding works to hide "folders" of data within a text document so I can access things quickly from their header line. This is particularly handy in the Research Depot file. Exempli gratia, I have NPRs Music recommendations of 2020 folded up to one visible line with checkboxes of albums I've tried. Another folded area is on Stinging Nettle uses.

My zettlekasten system was moved to Sublime as well. It got its own directory. Added a time stamp package for naming the file from the first line with a CMD-T, and some simple markdown, each file is a zettle. I use Zettlr for exploring the notes - but Sublime for editing. Perfect mix for me.

It's not so much this all saved me 100 hours, but my productivity is up 1000%. No hyperbole. My writing, projects, chores, fitness and client labor are all up by extraordinary levels. My down time is more relaxing, work more pleasurable, and creativity is like a real psychic adventure. And, it should also be noted I've been on Sublime for maybe ten years, or so it seems.

  Sublime
    TableEditor
    Code Folder feature
    Tabbed directories - combined windows view
  Zettlr 
  Monodraw - but looking at the markdown diagramming tools...

For writing HTML & CSS, definitely the Emmet plugin: https://emmet.io/

I still find myself in situations where I need more than Markdown but less than React; as a result I just need to quickly get some HTML on a page. Emmet lets you expand a snippet similar to a CSS selector into full-fledged markup, complete with attributes.

Alteryx Designer for ETL

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A2PaLZRpWdY

Likely more than a 100 hours saved using this tool for DWH work.

Omnisharp for emacs: troll your friends and co-workers by writing C#/dotnet in emacs! Omnisharp enables "intellisense" or whatever it's called nowadays, in emacs, via Company mode or similar. The code completion is a huge time saver.

Also, honorable mention for magic wormhole, a finally sane way to move arbitrary files between devices.

I started writing custom yasnippet snippets (in GNU Emacs) to write kubernetes yaml files.

If you ever had to write a non trivial deployment by hand you know what I'm talking about.

Probably a given on Mac: iTerm2 Terminal Emulator https://www.iterm2.com/

Less of a given, still Mac: Rectangle Tiling Window Organiser https://rectangleapp.com/

For Linux I would use Xmonad to achieve the same as the two programs above.

Plugging my own tool, but I wrote a Chrome extension that checks websites for SEO, speed, and security best practices (it's a crawler so it can check 100s of pages in a few minutes):

https://www.checkbot.io/

It saved me a lot of time and caught tons of mistakes before they got to production while working on multiple websites as a contractor

For example, I was assisting a team on one sprawling dynamic website with a lot of SEO and performance issues - the site had been hacked together over the years such that editing one page would usually break groups of unrelated pages in unexpected ways. My extension helped me get on top of which pages were dependent on each other, to prioritise what was worth fixing, and to confirm improvements had been made without breaking anything.

Here's a couple (albeit macOS focused) favorites of mine:

- Deliveries: macOS / iOS package tracking https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/deliveries-a-package-tracker...

- Screenotate: OCR all of your screenshots with metadata like program/webpage https://screenotate.com

- The Tagger: lightweight macOS utility to tag music / fetch metadata from discogs https://deadbeatsw.com/thetagger/

- youtube-dl: Download any video / song online https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/

It was fun thinking of these, I actually put together a blog post a while back listing my favorite software. Would love to revisit it soon: https://lukemil.es/blog/software-i-like

    choco install youtube-dl

Hasura [https://hasura.io] Graphql API and Subscription for any Postgres DB

Keycloak [https://www.keycloak.org] OpenID Auth Server

nREPL + Cider [https://github.com/clojure-emacs/cider] Clojure's Network Repl and Emacs integration for live coding Clojure

Company Mode [https://company-mode.github.io] Emacs autocomplete mode

Karabiner, Keyboard Maestro & Alfred for me. Probably more than 1000 hours at this point. Need to update my macOS repo with more tools I use now.

https://github.com/nikitavoloboev/my-mac-os

https://chocolatey.org/ - The Package Manager for Windows, similar to yum / apt

It has tons of software packages.

For desktop workflows I've started a spreadsheet documenting various utilities and os defaults I've depended on across mac/win/linux: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/148zTJUwfVv9xfDcpSoH3...

Intent was to explore if I still could be as productive doing a variety of things (general administrivia, writing, design, code) outside of MacOS. So it's organized less around a specific app but rather a workflow/concept.

Ideally I'd love to see a git-backed static website around this so people could fork/collect/share their workflows across environments visually.

- Emacs (with evil mode) and org-mode. The hours gained far outweigh the hours put in (and the hours put in were fun).

- Yabai on mac for not having to think about moving windows around.

- Pomodoro (now through org-mode) for helping focus (and saving hours, in a round-about-way.)

- Removing as much advertising from my life as possible. (Ublock origin, deleting social networks when possible)

    open -A [path to applications/emacs startup] $@

  EMACS="/Applications/Emacs.app/Contents/MacOS/Emacs"
  EMACSPOS="-g 140x66+655+23 --fullheight"
  e() { ( $EMACS $EMACSPOS "$@" & ) }

    add_plist PATH "$PATH"

  add_plist () {
    /usr/libexec/PlistBuddy -c 'Delete :'"$1" ~/.MacOSX/environment.plist >/dev/null
    /usr/libexec/PlistBuddy -c 'Add :'"$1"' string "'"$2"'"' ~/.MacOSX/environment.plist >/dev/null
  }

https://github.com/clvv/fasd https://github.com/nvbn/thefuck

Maybe not 100hrs, but ~40 Regex Buddy $40. regex tester, debugger and in a lesser extent, regex applier.

Overcast says its Smart Speed feature has saved me 30 hours (over the last ~5 months), so I expect it to save me 100 hours within a year. It is especially useful for podcasts and language learning material with a lot of pauses, but I have become used to it, and so I now keep it enabled for most audiobooks that I load into Overcast just to get the dynamic playback speed.

Devon Think.

Having a local search engine with annotations is incredibly useful.

Jupyter Notebook. And before that iPython (compared to the vanilla Pyton REPL).

Though these are hardly secret tools :)

- 1Password password manager

- PDFill Free PDF Tools - indispensable for dealing with any bureaucratic tasks - cutting/rearranging pages, etc

Uber Eats

Google Search Operators:

https://ahrefs.com/blog/google-advanced-search-operators/