I love keyboard shortcuts.
One of the first things I did on my first Mac was to install Quicksilver, the OG Application launcher, and hide the dock.
After a long time with LaunchBar, I eventually settled on Raycast. It’s one of the most powerful applications on my machine. With ⌘ + Space, and a few more keystrokes, I can make it do anything.
I spend nearly all day using my code editor. If I’m not coding for work, I’m often coding for myself. Many keyboard shortcuts that I learnt with Textmate still do the same thing in newer editors. My career took me through Coda, Sublime, Atom, and now Visual Studio Code.
Between the app launchers and code editors, it was worth it to learn how to control my Mac with just my keyboard. All of those years spent avoiding the mouse forced me to learn what felt like hidden incantations.
Both Raycast and VS Code now have AI built in. It’s in your OS, your phone, and even your washing machine. AI usage is a common topic of conversation when I speak with other developers. Opinions always differ on any tool, but my usage of keyboard shortcuts made me use it slightly differently, and I wanted to share that.
Natural text
Most people know that you interact with GitHub Copilot by pressing tab to accept the suggestion on screen. If it’s not right, you can type a bit more, and then see if the next suggestion is right.
Most people don’t know that macOS has shortcuts for moving through text. ⌘ and ←/→ move to the start or end of the line. ⌥ and ←/→ do the same by word. Adding Shift will select the text, while ⌫ deletes it.
One day, a wrong keypress taught me a new way to use Copilot. Buried in the docs under “Partially accepting suggestions” it explained what happened. ⌘ and → accepted the suggestion word-by-word.
Discovering this shortcut changed my whole way of working with Copilot. No longer was it occasionally taking me in wrong directions. Now, I was helping it to help me. Instead of tabbing to accept the whole suggestion, I could take a bit, write a bit, take a bit more, and write a bit more.
As developers, AI is another tool in our toolbox. People hated on SCSS when they wanted to stick with CSS. Haml made writing HTML easier, but many purists hated it. Emmet was a revolution, but plenty of people didn’t install it.
Copilot is another tool. Learning how to use our tools well makes us better developers.
Honourable mentions
- 🎬 We went to see Moonwalkers. Visually impressive and lots of fun. Nothing compared to visiting NASA though.
- 📺 Rotating through all the streaming services has brought us back to Apple TV. Catching up on Severance, Slow Horses, and Bad Sisters has been great.
- 🎮 I finished Starfield and it was ultimately a huge disappointment. At some point I’ll write about why.
- 🎮 I’m so hyped about DOOM: The Dark Ages that I restarted DOOM: Eternal. I never finished it on PS4, so I’m giving it a second go on Xbox and it’s just as fun another time round. The gameplay loop is chaotic perfection.