Junior Dev Shortcuts

So I obviously have been sucking at blogging 3 times per week these last 2 weeks :-) I apologize, and I won't make excuses because EVERYBODY is busy. I think from now on, I will shoot for writing 2 posts per week, and maybe try and make them a little longer.

One of the problems I've had besides being busy, is what to write about. Before I was hired, I never had that problem because I was SO goal focused on getting hired. I still have no problem with things I want to write about, but I've asked around and I'm not really supposed to talk about the inner workings of the company I work for because competitors could use it and stuff like that.

I've learned all these cool things, but in order to tell you how and what I learned, I would have to explain how things interact  in our system and how other parts of it work...which understandably is highly frowned upon :-(

Never fear! I am currently spending all my free time writing my ebook making sure it is going to revolutionize the way "blue collar" workers, college dropouts, and anyone who wants to can find their way into the cool IT "white collar" world.

BUT once the book is 100% done and released I have 2 really cool sites I am going to build and I will walk you through them, so that will be cool. Life is totally fun and exhilarating right now with SO much learning!

I get to work with a former "ethical hacker" so it's really cool at lunch to pick his brain. I feel like there should be a fee to be able to ask any type of IT world related question at lunch and then get to hear all sorts of opinions and differing view points from top notch developers and System admins. Last week at lunch I learned why or why not someone should use node.js and what EXACTLY are "callbacks" and how different types of things work in a "callback".

There are several new things down the road that I may be learning at ZipList depending on how things go, I can't really say just yet, but I'm REALLY hoping I get to learn this certain really cool technology, I'll of course keep you posted!

Since being hired, I've learned about 2 million shortcuts, and am getting pretty fast on the ole' keyboard, telling you all the shortcuts I've learned and writing them down is of no use to you, so I will give you 1 shortcut that is super easy and super helpful for now.

Here's the shortcut:(on a Mac)

Press the "control" key plus 'a' to go to the beginning of the line when using the terminal.

Press the "control" key plus 'e' to go to the end of the line when using the terminal.

Your like: "So what, ...big deal", well yes and no, but here's the cool part, what you just learned is a "key bindings" shortcut. These are similar to the ones used in emacs. The reason I think you should use control + 'a' or control + 'e' is when you are typing in certain windows like Blogger, the only recognized shortcut to move through the page is the shortcut I just showed you.

Here's another use with the same shortcut: Have you ever been writing an email in Gmail and wanted to go the beginning of the line? Or the end of the line to fix a spelling error? control 'a' or 'e' BINGO! See, that shortcut is good at a minimum for all emails and when using the terminal.

I'll slowly "spoon feed" you the best most useful shortcuts that are extremely handy :-)

-Josh