Skip to main content

Boosting Productivity

Introduction​

This document shows some of the skills I learned (from the Internet or my co-workers) to boost productivity.

VSCode Skills​

Useful Shortcuts​

  1. Comment out multiple lines: cmd+k+c
  2. Modify all occurrences: cmd+d
  3. Close the current windowL: cmd+w
  4. Close all opened windows: cmd+k+w
  5. Quickly open a file using its name: cmd+p and then type in the filename

Project-Specific VSCode Settings​

  1. Press Cmd + Shift + P and then search for Open Workspace Settings:

    settings-editor-workspace-tab

  2. Modify the settings that you want to apply specifically to your current project.

    For example, you can change the Editor: Tab Size from 4 to 2(if needed).

  3. After this, a file called .vscode/settings.json will be created in the root of your project (workspace).

    For more information, see VSCode Workspace Settings.

Using SSH to connect to a server in Visual Studio Code​

If you have a server, you can edit its files or run commands in it from a remote host using SSH:

ssh username@ip-address

Replace username and ip-address with the actual ones.

In addition to that, you can also edit files from Visual Studio Code with the Remote - SSH extension, which is highly recommended for operations that require a lot of copy-and-paste operations. To use it:

  1. Install Remote - SSH.
  2. Press Command + Shift + P and choose Remote-SSH: Connect to Host....
  3. Enter the SSH information, for example, username@ip-address.

After this, you can open the server files from Visual Studio Code with ease. For more information, see Remote Development using SSH.

info

If the device's SSH key has changed, you can either remove the offending key from your known_hosts file or update it with the new key. To do so, open $HOME/.ssh/known_hosts and remove the affected line. It can also be done with a command ssh-keygen -R ip-address.

Command-Line Skills​

Highlighting Syntax​

Highlighting Commands​

You can highlight commands in terminal using oh-my-zsh. Install it as follows:

# use curl
sh -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ohmyzsh/ohmyzsh/master/tools/install.sh)"

# use wget
sh -c "$(wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ohmyzsh/ohmyzsh/master/tools/install.sh -O -)"

Highlighting vim Syntax​

  1. Create or edit ~/.vimrc.

    vim ~/.vimrc

  2. Append the following line to the file:

    syntax on

For more information, see this doc.

Changing the Default Directory in Terminal​

The default directory of the terminal is the user's root directory. If you want to change it to a directory that is used more often, you can:

  1. Open the ~/.zshrc file:

    vi ~/.zshrc

  2. Add the following line to the file. Note that you need to replace <target-directory> with the directory you wish to open every time you open the terminal.

    cd <target-directory>

    After this, the default directory of the terminal will become <target-directory>.

Creating Command Aliases in Mac​

  1. Open the ~/.zshrc file:

    vi ~/.zshrc

    In the editor, add your alias in the format of alias shortname="actual command" (e.g., alias m="multipass"). You can add multiple aliases (one alias per line).

  2. At the end of the file, add the following line:

    source ~/.zshrc

    In this way, your aliases will be permanent, meaning they will take effect even if you exit the terminal and reopen it.