Tips and Tricks for Increased Development Efficiency

Tips and Tricks for Increased
Development Efficiency
or, “things you will probably not learn in university”
Olivier Bourgeois
Mount Allison University
February 12, 2018

Content
● Introduction
● A Note for Windows Users
● A Note for macOS Users
● Modern Shells
● Terminal Multiplexer
● Personalize Your Dotfiles
● Useful Commands
● Misc FAQ
● Closing Words

Introduction
As a computer science student at university, you know a lot about algorithms.
What about everything that surrounds writing these algorithms?
I’ll be walking through a high level overview of terminals, shells, multiplexers, as
well as a decent amount of useful commands and flags.
What about an example of a highly useful command?
fortune -s | cowsay | lolcat

A Note for Windows Users
Avoid using Windows*
*Linux Subsystem for Windows 10: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/install-win10

A Note for Windows Users
Three main reasons to move to a Unix system for development:
1. Package managers
2. Shell scripting
3. Less friction interacting with other Unix systems
● Ubuntu: https://www.ubuntu.com/download/desktop
● Mint: https://linuxmint.com/download.php
● macOS: https://www.apple.com/ca/mac/

A Note for macOS Users
macOS is based off a branch of Unix, but by default is missing two important
pieces that Linux distributions generally already have:
● A good customizable terminal: https://iterm2.com/
● A universal package manager: https://brew.sh/
Once those two things are installed, we’ll be ready to roll!

Modern Shells
Every Unix systems comes with some close variant or unmodified version
of sh (1971) or bash (1989) as a default shell. These programs are old.
Various widely available shell features:
● Aliases
● Environment variables
● Shortcuts (C-[a/e/l/k], A-[f/b], up/down…)
● Piping (|, >, <, >>, &)
● Expressions (!!, -, ., .., ~)

Modern Shells
Advantages of moving towards a more modern shell instead:
● Powerful tab completion
● Command suggestions
● Path expansion
● Git plugins
● Dynamic aliases
● Tons of customization

Modern Shells
zsh:
● Extension of Bash from 1990
● Follows the POSIX standard more closely than fish
● More customizable than fish
fish:
● Exotic shell from 2005
● Slightly different from the Bash syntax
● A lot more out-of-the-box than zsh

Terminal Multiplexer
“A terminal multiplexer is a software application that can be used to multiplex
several virtual consoles” - Wikipedia, useful as always
Advantages of multiplexers:
● Persistence
● Multiple panes/tabs
● Session sharing
● Predefined configurations
● Input synchronization

Terminal Multiplexer
screen:
● Initial release in 1987
● Installed by default on most systems
● Built-in telnet client
tmux:
● Initial release in 2007
● Easier configuration and plugins

Personalize Your Dotfiles
Dotfiles are configuration files for Unix applications (usually starting with a dot
to hide the file, hence the name) stored in your home directory.
Suggestions:
● Customize dotfiles for applications you spend a lot of time in (e.g. tmux)
● Store customized dotfiles in a source repository (e.g. github)
● Automate repeated processes using dotfiles, aliases, and scripts
● Pick a preferred color scheme and font, and use it consistently

Useful Commands
In 1986, Donald Knuth (the father of algorithm analysis) was asked to write a
program which could read a text, determine the n most frequently used words,
and print out a sorted list of those words along with their frequencies.
His solution was about 10 printed pages of Pascal long.
It was well designed and used efficient data structures.
In response, a reader wrote a shell script that produced the same output [...]

Useful Commands
The script was six lines long.
tr -cs A-Za-z ‘n’ |
tr A-Z z-a |
sort |
uniq -c |
sort -rn |
sed {$1}q

Useful Commands
Basic commands:
● man - display the manual for a command
● ls - list directory content (-l print details, -a print hidden, -h human units)
● cd - change current directory
● pwd - print current path
● mv - move files around
● cp - copy files around (-r recursive)
● rm - remove files (-r recursive, -f force)
● mkdir - create directories (-p also create parent directories)

Useful Commands
Basic commands:
● which - show the path of a shell command
● date - print the system date and time
● tree - list directories and files in a tree-like format (-L level)
● ln - make links between files (-s symbolic link)
● touch - create empty files
● chmod - change the permissions of files
● chown - change the owner of files

Useful Commands
Files and inputs:
● echo - print a line of text (-e recognize escape sequences)
● less - interactive reading of file or input
● tail - output last portion of a file or input (-f follow, -n number of lines)
● grep - print lines matching a pattern (-v invert pattern)
● find - search for files in directories (-name file pattern)
● diff - compare files line by line (-w ignore all whitespace)
● sort - sort lines of text (-f ignore case, -r reverse)
● wc - print the amount of lines, words, and bytes (-l print only line count)

Useful Commands
System-related commands:
● uname - print system information (-a print all information)
● free - display amount of free and used memory (-h human units)
● lsblk - list the system’s block devices and partitions
● df - display file system disk space usage (-h human units)
● du - estimate file space usage (-h human units, -s summarize)

Useful Commands
Process-related commands:
● top - process manager / viewer
● htop - better process manager / viewer
● ps aux - lists all currently running processes
● kill - kill a process based on pid (-9 force kill)
● pkill - kill a process based on name pattern (-9 force kill)

Useful Commands
Network commands:
● ssh - ssh client
● scp - secure copy over ssh (-r recursive)
● ping - send icmp echo requests to hosts
● wget - non-interactive file downloader
● curl - transfer data to or from server (-k insecure connection)

Misc FAQ
● How do I change my shell permanently?
○ chsh -s <shell path> (after installing the shell)
● What if a command seems to be missing?
○ apt-get install <command> or brew install <command> (or other, depending on distro)
● How do I do the whole “git dotfiles” deal?
○ Have your customized dotfiles in a separate directory that isn’t your home (e.g. ~/dotfiles)
and symlink them to where they should be. (e.g. ln -s ~/dotfiles/.vimrc ~/.vimrc)
● What font and color scheme do you use currently?
○ At the moment I’m a big fan of SF Mono with a Solarized Dark theme.

Closing Words
Don’t be afraid of trying new techniques, languages, and tools.
Text Editors:
● Vim, Emacs
● Atom
● VSCode
Java IDEs:
● IntelliJ**
Languages:
● Java/Kotlin
● Python
● C++
● Golang
● Javascript
Data formats:
● JSON
● YAML
Technologies:
● Ansible
● Docker

Closing Words
“I have never let schooling interfere with my education.”
- Grant Allen / Mark Twain
Continuous learning is already important in most areas of life,
but it is almost required in software engineering to stay relevant.
There are a ton of great blogs, podcasts, and books out there.
Great starter Wiki about a ton of topics relating to software careers:
https://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/wiki/index

Questions?
Any other things I should cover for next time?

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