11 July 2008
Judging applications
I was writing up some C# lately for a small tool that automated much of what I was doing. (basically some transformations on data and pushing that to oracle). As all good IT people, I love things that are efficient and make my life easy. Basically, the less time something takes, the better. No matter how common that task is or how much I may have to repeat that task. The less time I spend on these things, that could be very trivial, the more time I can spend on things that actually matter.
There basically are 2 distinct modes, and a hybrid 3rd, in which I handle a pc. First of all, there’s mouse mode. It basically means I’m browsing the web, catching up on some feeds, occasionally typing a few words but most of my time is spent mousing around. It’s a relaxed clicking atmosphere.
The second is where I use my keyboard, but very often switch to my mouse. Even for very trivial tasks like switching applications I’ll use my mouse.
The last mode is nearly exclusive keyboard usage. My entire pc is steered through my keyboard. Even trivial tasks like changing the track on winamp are done through keyboard shortcuts
As you could have guessed: these 3 modes are tightly coupled to my position to the zone. The closer I get to the zone, the less I use my mouse. When I’m really in the zone, my mouse is merely a piece of decoration on my desktop.
We all understand the importance of the zone and we tailor our environment in such a way that the zone is always within reach (even though we don’t always get there).
Going back to what I said earlier, the way I use my computer, and the way my zone works define heavily how I want tools to work and how my machine is set up. So coming up are some zone-enabling-tools that I couldn’t live without when shooting for highest productivity.
*Launchy
A rather recent discovery, but I’m totally in love with this tool. Just hit alt+space from any application and start typing the name of the tool you want to launch. On its own this is already far better than clicking a shortcut (or the windows+r and typing the full name).
One of the nicest features is that it remembers which tool you fired up last time, so the first option will always be the tool you fired latest. In my cases this results in f = firefox, v = visual studio, g = gvim, o = outlook, q = sql developer. Try to beat me in launching an application by: taking your hand from the keyboard, get hold of the mouse, navigate to the right shortcut, doubleclick it.
*Winamp
No zone without music! This has been my loyal companion for ages. I prefer the MMD3 skin on winamp 5. Preferably minimalized to the wide/small version snapped to the top of my screen, in the center, always on top of any other window. Just lifting my eyes tells me what track is playing and how far along it is. Winamp has global hotkeys, which is just a fancy name for: whenever I hit ctrl+alt+W/X/C/V/B/J resulting in previous song/play/pause/next song/stop/jump to song.
*Headphones
Preferably noise blocking, but normal headphones can do.
*Dual screen
When writing code this means: edit code on one screen, debug, project explorer, im, firefox arranged on the other. For most tasks my main screen (internal laptop) is used for the activity that I have to have a lot of keyboard interaction with, my second screen (external 19") is used for reference material and various mind-break software.
*Vim
Or any good text editor for that matter. I like vim a lot since it can be steered entirely without mouse interaction and supports a wide range of functionality (I love those regex based search/replace tricks).
*an in-memory list of OS and tool shortcuts
You may get the point by now, the zone and excessive keyboard action are tightly coupled for me. So knowing the shortcuts for most common tasks (switching apps, copy-paste, context menu, auto complete code, build solution run project in debug, switching between agenda and inbox in outlook, …) are just soooo time saving. I don’t know every shortcut but for most common tasks I don’t have to take my hands off the keyboard.
2 Comments currently posted.
Bramus! says:
Don Ardonio says:
@Bramus
I used to be a windows+R fan myself. But the interesting part of launchy is that it goes beyond win+R.
win+R is stuck in directories that are either set in your classpath variable (or system directories in general).
Launchy can launch anything, ranging from folders (in explorer), files, tools, scripts, … at any place you point it to.
I know, this is all possible with win+R also, but the setup is much more annoying, since launchy by defaults scans your start menu and desktop (which is where I keep most of my crap anyway)
And yes, Flat Eric could be my middle name also
Heh, I’m a freaking keyboarder too … lots of shortcuts (especially when working in Photoshop and Zend Studio) come in handy and save me lots of time. That combined with some little .bat scripts I’ve written make working way more easy and especially FASTER.
Had heard of Launchy before (when I was about to tag it into my del.icio.us a few minutes ago it told me I already tagged it in May 2006 :S), yet hadn’t installed it yet. Mostly I fall back to WIN+R, enter the name of the program and hit enter (a bit like Launchy offers, except for the autocompletion part).
As far as it comes to favorite texteditor I’m still hooked to textpad … lots of shortcuts indeed, although they’re quite uncommon: F5 is search (instead of CTRL+F), F8 is search & replace (instead of CTRL+H), ALT+Q+L is toggle line numbers, etc.
And yeah, music … when I first started working I wasn’t used to it, actually found it a bit disturbing. But now I can’t live without it. Every now and then my colleagues see me nodding along the music (Flat Eric Style) while the code rolls out of my head/fingers