Quality of Life Coding “Hacks”

I remember when I started out coding, I saw veteran coders fly around their screens writing crazy code all over the place. It looked intense.

How hacking is depicted in TV shows (From the TV Series Arrow)

When it came to writing code, writing music in a DAW (Digital Audio Workstation), or even modding video games, I always took the time to search out any new ways to improve my interactions with the interface. I find that trying to utilize many of the keyboard shortcuts as frequently as possible, significantly increases my workflow efficiency and my quality of interactions within my work-space.

I call these Quality of Life (QoL) shortcuts because quite simply put these shortcuts help improve workflow and your “quality of life” as a user of the interface that you are dealing with.

I mainly code in Visual Studio Code on Linux, so the keyboard inputs are listed as such.

Useful Visual Studio Code QoL Shortcuts

• Ctrl + ` => Open/hide Local terminal
• Ctrl + \ => Opens current file in new group (to the right by default)
• Ctrl + “#” => Switch to “#” group

• Ctrl + / => Toggle commented line

• Ctrl + Tab => Switch to previous tabbed file
• Ctrl+Shift+Tab => Switch to previous tabbed file (reversed direction)
• Ctrl+Shift+K+Enter => Keeps current file open for editing
• Ctrl + D => Select next occurrence of highlighted selection

• (After Ctrl+D): Alt + C => Match Case

• (After Ctrl+D): Alt + W => Match Whole Word

• (After Ctrl+D): Alt + R => Use regular expression
• Alt + Z => Toggle Word Wrap
• Alt + “up/down arrow” => Move entire line up/down

There are many more QoL shortcuts available, but on my day to day coding experience, these have been the most useful to me. After lots of practice using these and other more personalized shortcuts for your particular workflow, you too can look like a cool superhero hacker, or a maybe even a super-villain…

(From the TV series Arrow)