

Alias Your Mom, and 4 Other Tips for Productive Development - renaebair
http://intridea.com/2010/9/28/alias-your-mom-and-4-other-productivity-tips

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frossie
_Just turn off the distracting notifications. That means growl notifications,
dock icon badge counts, audio notifications (ding!), and anything else that
might pull you away from what you're doing._

So we use IM for work a lot (even within the same office), and I have found
that the optimal level of notification is a static or barely animated icon in
the bottom right of your screen (no pop-ups or audio or anything like that).
It's subtle enough that you don't see it if you are in the zone, but easy
enough to spot if you're task-switching anyway.

As for aliasing, I have gone backwards through the years - I used to alias
everything, but then I discovered when I sat in front of a virgin system I
couldn't remember how to _do_ anything so now I avoid it whenever reasonable.
I do, however, make heavy use of keyboard acceleration to minimise mouse use,
which in turn minimises wrist pain.

~~~
a-priori
Instead of aliasing common commands, I make heavy use of Ctrl-r at the command
prompt to search the history.

So if I have a complex command I want to run several times, I'll type it out
in full the first time. After that, I'll hit Ctrl-r and start typing part of
the command until it shows the one I mean, then hit enter to run it.

~~~
gommm
If you're using zsh, you should try adding this to your .zshrc

bindkey '\e[A' history-search-backward bindkey '\e[B' history-search-forward

It tells zsh to search backward and forward in the history for any line
starting with the same string as what is currently entered when you press the
up and down arrow... Helps saves a lot of time compared to always just using
Ctrl-r.

I think there's an equivalent for bash, but I don't know it...

~~~
gcr
My bash uses readline, so I have this in my ~/.inputrc:

    
    
      "\e[5~": history-search-backward
      "\e[6~": history-search-forward
    

This is for PageUp and PageDn.

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njharman
> And the vast majority of my aliases are only 2-3 characters. What's the
> point in an alias if it still takes you several seconds to type it out?

Use tab/bash completion and history man! only the first couple characters need
to be mostly unique.

~~~
cullenking
Tab complete does not make using long arguments any easier. Here is the
example the post reminded me to alias (well, script since I need to pass it
arguments):

find app/views/ -name *haml -exec grep 'my_js_file.js' /dev/null '{}' \;

Lots of that can be done away with.

~~~
Tekhne
Actually, bash completion DOES help with long arguments or any arguments. It's
true that you have to invest the time to write a completion script tailored
for the commands you're interested in, but it can definitely be worth it (e.g.
git completion).

~~~
cullenking
Cool, thanks for the tip!

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twymer
I don't really agree with the mobile browsing. I guess it helps avoid getting
sucked in but it also dramatically lowers your rate of intake if you want to
read all articles from a given blog or subject.

