A few coding efficiency tips from a beginner!
Tags: beginners, flatironschool, efficiency
Published: 2020-03-03 00:59:06

I'm currently studying at Flatiron School, and I'm often striving to learn ways to be more efficient while coding. 

Below are a few ways to do so! Some of these I've been using, and some I am trying to get in the habit of using. 


**Allow your computer to delete words much faster when you hold delete.**

To do this on a Mac, go to system preferences, keyboard, and pull the levers for ‘key repeat’ and ‘delay until repeat’ all the way to the right side. When holding delete to delete code, you won't have to wait near as long as before. 


**Make trackpad speed as fast as Mac allows, or even faster!**

I’m a believer that the faster your mouse pointer travels, the more distance you cover in a period of time, and thus, you can get more tasks done on your computer in that period of time. 

Using the fastest Mac-provided trackpad speed is something I was enjoying for a while. Then, I wanted to turn the speed up a few more notches, and with a quick google search, found there is a way to increase the trackpad speed even faster than the Mac-provided speed by using a terminal command. I made my trackpad speed even faster with this and feel that it has helped my productivity even more. 

The fastest Mac-provided trackpad speed is 3.0. I have my current trackpad speed set at 8.0 thanks to this terminal trick. 

A quick google search of the following will lead you down a path to figure this out: “make trackpad speed faster than mac allows using terminal”.


**Have “end” automatically typed for you when needed while in VSCODE in Ruby.**

This is enabled by an extension called Endwise in Ruby. This extension saves a lot of time since instead of typing 'end' when you need to, this extension automatically puts needed ends where they should be as soon as you press enter to go to the next line. 

In VSCODE, just click the icon that resembles blocks on the left, type in endwise and click install to get this extension.


**Have your Ruby code automatically formatted correctly in VCSCODE.**

Rufo is an extension that automatically correctly formats your code for you. I love this extension as it saves me time and headspace, and keeps my code looking nice and organized. 

**Option-click in VSCODE to edit multiple areas of a file at once.** 

This key command is super easy and allows you to place a visible cursor in many specific spots of your code in VSCODE. Then once you start typing, the content that you're typing is written into all of those cursor locations at once. This can save a lot of time if you have a lot of similar variable names or keywords that you want to change at the same time.


**Option up arrow/down arrow in VSCODE**

If you place your cursor in front of a VSCODE line and then hold the option key and the up or down arrow, you can quickly move that line of code your cursor is on to higher or lower lines.


**Spectacle Window Manager for Mac**

Spectacle Window Manager is a free Window Manager I just downloaded that seems like it will be great. A window manager is basically a tool that helps you place multiple windows in different parts of your screen and can intelligently remember how you prefer your screen to be set up. 

These save valuable time when doing tasks so that you don’t have to change screens and search for other windows that you also need to be using, but instead you can have it all neatly laid out right in front of you.