Development Hacks: Fast, Practical Tips to Ship Better Code

Want to ship faster without breaking things? Small, repeatable hacks cut hours off your day. These are hands-on tricks I use daily—shortcuts, tiny automations, and debugging habits that actually save time.

Daily coding hacks that stick

Start with your editor. Learn three keyboard shortcuts that matter: open files fast (Ctrl/Cmd+P), jump to symbol (Ctrl/Cmd+T), and multi-cursor edits (Alt+Click). Setting up snippets for common patterns (REST handlers, test boilerplates) removes repetitive typing and prevents errors.

Use an opinionated formatter and linter—Prettier or Black plus ESLint or flake8. They remove style debates and cut review time. Combine them with a pre-commit hook so code is cleaned before you push. One config file shared across the team saves dozens of nitpicks.

Automate the small stuff. A short script to seed a dev database or reset test data is worth a morning of work. I keep these scripts in a dev/bin folder and call them with ./dev/bin/reset_db. It beats manual clicking every time.

Keep a library of tiny templates: README, issue template, basic CI workflow. New features should start from a checklist: build, tests, lint, deploy preview. Checklists prevent obvious misses and speed up reviews.

Debugging and workflow tricks

Reproduce the bug first. If you can’t reproduce it locally, write a minimal test that fails—then fix the test. Tests turn vague problems into concrete tasks and stop regressions from coming back.

Use binary search to find regressions: git bisect narrows the bad commit fast. For runtime issues, prefer breakpoints over print spam. Modern debuggers let you change variables on the fly and run expressions—faster than redeploying.

Logging matters: structured logs with consistent keys make searching far easier. Start logs with a unique request ID you can trace through the stack. If logs are noisy, add sample rates or debug flags instead of deleting details.

Pairing and rubber-ducking scale knowledge quickly. A quick screen-share session often spots assumptions you missed. Rotate pairing partners so fixes don’t live in just one person’s head.

Finally, save time by learning a few CLI power tools: ripgrep for fast search, tmux for session persistence, and jq for inspecting JSON. A couple of commands that do heavy lifting will repay hours over a month.

Try one hack this week: add a formatter, write one helper script, or set up a pre-commit hook. Small changes compound—do a bit every sprint and you’ll notice less firefighting and more steady progress.