Coding shortcuts to speed up your work

Want to get more done without adding hours to your day? Small coding shortcuts stack up fast. Use a few that match your workflow and you’ll shave minutes — sometimes hours — off routine tasks.

Editor & IDE tricks

Start with the basics: learn your editor’s quick open, multi-cursor, and comment toggles. In Visual Studio Code, Quick Open (Ctrl/Cmd+P), multi-cursor (Alt+Click or Ctrl/Cmd+D), and comment toggle (Ctrl/Cmd+/) are gold. JetBrains users should lean on Find Action (Ctrl/Cmd+Shift+A), Rename (Shift+F6), and Extend Selection (Ctrl+W). These let you search, edit, and refactor faster than clicking around.

Snippets and live templates cut boilerplate. Create snippets for common patterns — component scaffolds, API calls, or test stubs — with placeholders so you only fill what changes. Emmet speeds up HTML. And if you repeat a sequence, record a macro or bind a custom shortcut instead of repeating the same keystrokes.

Use focused extensions: an auto-formatter (Prettier), a linter (ESLint), and a test runner integration. They reduce manual fixes and keep your code consistent, so you spend less time on style and more on logic.

Command line, git, and automation

The terminal is where real shortcuts matter. Replace long commands with aliases in your shell config: pin common git flows, docker runs, or test scripts to short names. Learn fast search tools: ripgrep (rg) and fzf find code far quicker than basic grep or IDE-only search.

Make git less painful: use git status -s for a compact view, git add -p to stage hunks interactively, and git stash to switch contexts quickly. Learn one or two rebase and reset commands so you can fix mistakes without long dead-ends. Use branch templates or commit hooks to enforce quality automatically.

Automate repetitive tasks with tiny scripts in package.json or a Makefile. Want to run tests, build, and lint? One script can do all three. CI tools can run those scripts so you don’t need to remember every step locally.

Debugging faster: use breakpoints, conditional breakpoints, and logpoints in your IDE instead of scattering console.logs. Use a watch expression for values you care about. When stepping through code, prefer step-over and conditional breakpoints; they often find the issue faster than stepping line-by-line.

Finally, build a learning habit: add one shortcut to your routine every week. Map keys to tools you use most, prune unused plugins, and keep your workspace lean. Small, steady changes transform into big time savings.

Pick two shortcuts today, use them until natural, then add two more. You’ll be surprised how much smoother development feels once the obvious friction is gone.