Small knowledge compounds fast

Engineering productivity comes from accumulating small nuggets: knowing a language feature exists, understanding TCP_NO_DELAY, or remembering the right git command.

“small bits of knowledge are powerful! and fun! and approachable!!”

Search shell history better

Install fzf to upgrade ctrl+r to fuzzy search, or use atuin to replace your shell history with a searchable SQLite database with per-directory filtering.

Database queries without tables

Use SELECT without a FROM clause to test database functions or understand behavior like how SELECT TRUE not equal to NULL works. PostgreSQL and MySQL both support EXPLAIN ANALYZE to run queries and see detailed performance data.

Regex and metrics shortcuts

Use the word boundary assertion \b to find word beginnings or ends in regex. Use logarithms with metrics to bucket value distributions, like Math.floor(Math.log10(userInGroupCount)).

Modern JavaScript and Node tricks

Modern JS supports Array.flatMap, Object.entries, and Promise.withResolvers. In Node, create an https.Agent and pass it to fetch requests to keep connections open and dramatically reduce latency.

Git and shell power moves

Use git log -S pattern (git pickaxe) to find all commits that added or removed a string. Use git checkout - to switch to your previous HEAD, just like cd -. Enable bash globstar with shopt -s globstar to use **/*.md instead of find.

“git log -S pattern can give you all commits that added or removed a string in a codebase”

Share tricks with your team

At companies, high-leverage knowledge includes debugging data sources, who knows what, where docs live, and when to scale. Share one trick per day with your team to build collective knowledge without overwhelming people.