Day 10: Learn Keyboard Shortcuts
Hi, this is the 10th part of a series of posts on 30 tips to becoming a better developer. If you would like to keep up to date with the topics that I am covering, just check the main post.
Programming is like playing a game. It gets better when you have more practice. Although you need a lot of intellectual acuity in order to create good programs, it also helps if you can do it faster.
Working faster is one of the abilities of good programmers that separate them from the remaining of the pack. If you can program fast, you can find better solutions by just iterating. You can do three different solutions and select the best one, while your fellow will be stuck on the first option. It is a numbers game, in some way.
While it doesn’t make any good to write thousands of lines of bad code, writing more code will improve your capacity to reason about what needs to be developed. It is the typical reinforcement loop that can make you a real performer.
So, although working fast is not what makes good code, by practicing fast paced work you will actually achieve better results quicker. And one of the best ways to improve your speed is learn the tricks of the keyboard.
Developing as a Musician
The metaphor of a musician is an interesting one, because musicians don’t need to play fast every time, but it is a fundamental skill to play fast when necessary. The same goes for developers. But to “play” well, you need to understand the “instrument”.
To improve speed, I think it is essential to learn the most keyboard shortcuts you can. Typing is faster than using the mouse for programming tasks, that involve textual composition (it is different for people working on graphics, but many of them also love keyboard shortcuts).
Every decent development tool has a lot of keyboard shortcuts that can make you go faster. Start by learning just a few of them. Then, try to learn a new one every day. In a few weeks, you will see that your speed has increased dramatically.
It also helps to get a good text editor. What a good text editor is changes from person to person (I am a Vim fan), but there is a lot of good choices: vim, emacs, texmate/e, eclipse. Take the tool that best solves your problem and is adapted to your work style, and learn it like you would learn a good video game.
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About the Author
Carlos Oliveira holds a PhD in Systems Engineering and Optimization from University of Florida. He works as a software engineer, with more than 10 years of experience in developing high performance, commercial and scientific applications in C++, Java, and Objective-C. His most Recent Book is Practical C++ Financial Programming.
Have you posted day 11 yet?
thanks,
John
By John Gartrell on Feb 8, 2010