Optimize the Environment
Learn to make the most out of your programming environments.
We'll cover the following...
Let’s start from the beginning: when it’s time to work, what program do you start? Visual Studio, Emacs, or a terminal window? Before we ever get to writing code, we have the programming environment that we code in. The environment includes our computer, text editor, compiler, debugger, and so forth.
Chances are we’re using only a fraction of the capabilities offered by each of these tools. We can make big gains in efficiency with just a modest investment.
Text editor
A co-worker of mine who’s a machinist taunts programmers: “You have the easiest job in the world; it’s just typing.” Indeed, we do spend a lot of time typing. There are some other details involved, of course, programmers have an odd aversion to vowels and a special fondness for semicolons, but sometimes our bottleneck truly is getting characters on-screen.
Given all the time we spend typing, we could maybe save 10 percent of our effort if we could make the text editor do some of the tedious work for us. Can you imagine how much time that 10 percent would save over the course of a year?
If we watch an experienced programmer at work, the first thing we’ll notice is not the wizardry of their code; it’ll be their wizardry of manipulating their code. An experienced programmer seemingly types ahead of the computer because even as they zap code from one place to another in an instant, they’re thinking five steps ahead and could, quite literally, close their eyes for a few seconds and let their fingers catch up.
The programmer’s editor
The ability to blaze through code requires a programmer’s editor. There are plenty of these to go around, from the primitive-looking vi and vim to the fancy TextMate ...