Compounding time-saving command-line tricks for Software Developers

First, find out what your most commonly used commands are, by running the below command.

history |  awk '{print $1}' | sort | uniq -c  | sort -nr | head -n 15

For me, it was the following.

    431 git
    122 ptw
    109 yarn
    100 sudo
     65 cd
     51 docker
     36 find
     34 rm
     31 pip
     31 ls
     23 cat
     20 pyenv
     20 kill
     16 gpg

To save time, over time. We can either try to remove commands or shorten the amount we need to type to execute them.

In my case, I added shell aliases for the following commands to shorten them.

g -> git
d -> docker
y -> yarn
f -> find

Sudo has to stay, but we can remove the need to have to keep typing in a password by taking the following steps.

  1. Type ‘sudo visudo
  2. In the file which opens in your editor, add the following line to the bottom, replacing ‘<your_username>’ with your system login username.

<your_username> ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD: ALL

After this, you can type ‘sudo whatever command’ in a terminal without being prompted for the password.


That’s it. Although these changes seem minor, over time, you can save yourself a significant amount of time using these methods.

Do you have any tips to speed up your workflow and save time? If so, share them below!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *