“Focus on 8-Minute Increments to Beat Back Chores”
Anything that helps deal with distasteful chores is welcome.
Archive of posts filed under the Productivity category.
Windows 7
Last Friday, I discovered that I needed a 64-bit version of Windows for development purposes. I had a 64-bit version of Windows XP on a spare machine, but I haven’t set it up since the recent move, and until we get more stuff organized, I frankly don’t have the room. But it occurred to me …
Version Control: The Big Picture
During my most recent software development project, which I’ve already blogged about extensively, I finally learned to use a version control system (VCS from here on) right. To fully understand this, you have to know where I was coming from. I learned to program in the early-to-mid eighties, and never even heard of a VCS …
“Naps Can Seriously Improve All-Day Learning Abilities”
I never needed to be convinced of this, but it’s nice to know nonetheless.
VMware Fusion and Windows Development
I’ve spent the last few days integrating my new math library into the Windows project I started coding it for. Yesterday morning I was ready to try running the integrated copy, but I had some kind of problem starting it up. I couldn’t track it down very easily though, due to how long it took …
Taming MSVC’s Intellisense
Microsoft Visual C++ 2005 (i.e. v8) is a decent compiler, with a decent IDE. But there’s one “feature” that I dislike passionately: Intellisense. The idea behind it is a good one: that the IDE scans your source code every so often and figures out how certain things will be compiled so that it can tell …
Decisions, Decisions…
One of the repeating items on my to-do list is cleaning off my office desk. It’s something I committed to recently, to try to keep my working area tidy; so long as I keep on top of it every few days, it only takes a few minutes each time. But I’d found myself putting it …
Triple Monitors!
As a programmer, I’ve always found that the more monitor space you’ve got, the more productive you can be. And multiple monitors are even better than a single huge monitor, in a lot of ways. When you’re referring to online documentation while you’re programming, for example, it’s a lot easier to just glance from one …
“Is Antivirus Dead?”
I’ve mentioned before that I no longer run antivirus software on most of my Windows machines, but Bruce Schneier has just posted a persuasive argument in favor of it in most cases, despite the flaws. But persuasive or not, it doesn’t change my opinion or my stance on the systems I control. Antivirus is generally …
“Capstone projects and time management”
Joel On Software, on one of the few similarities between student projects and professional ones: It’s taken me a while, but I finally learned that long-term deadlines (or no deadlines at all) just don’t work with professional programmers, either: you need a schedule of regular, frequent deliverables to be productive over the long term. That …
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