Best Practice 7 - Keep your Tools & Techniques Handy

I remember an instance when I wanted to find out debug keyword in all the C++ files available in various directories and sub-directories, it took me 30 minutes to find the command, but finally, I kept a note of the command, and whenever I'm in need, I use it without wasting a second.

$find . -name \*.cpp -exec grep -q "debug" '{}' \; -print

So, I made it one of the best practices to keep such commands and tools handy so that they can be used anytime without doing any R&D and to save valuable time. Better to maintain a text file having all such frequently used commands and create its link at desktop.

Few Essential Tools

It depends on what type of programming, coding you are doing but following are few of the essential tools, which should be readily available with a software developer:

• A good text editor to write and edit the program.
• A nice debugger to debug the program.
• A memory detector in case you are using dynamic memory allocation.
• Putty to connect to a remote machine.
• WinSCP or FileZilla to ftp files on a remote machine.
• IDE ( Integrated Development Environment) for rapid development.

Always keep adding new tools & techniques in your box

Make sure you keep applying latest patches of your tools and utilities and same time I will suggest to clean unwanted software from your computer as they unnecessarily make your computer slow and you never know if any one of them is having a security hole, which can expose your computer to the outside world.