The only better feeling than deleting code is automating away mundane tasks. This playlist shows off many variations of tasks that can be automated away with tools like zsh functions, alfred, and karabiner. These techniques apply broadly to the small development tasks you tackle every day.

This first lesson shows off the workflow after automating all of the mundane tasks away. Throughout the playlist, we'll cover everything shown in this overview in more depth.

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Overview of Automate Everything

Lessons often have common starting points. If you're going to make lessons in bulk, it helps to create templates so you don't waste time setting them up over and over.

Create a Lesson Template

Once your lesson template is ready, it's time to create some github repos to share your code. The easiest way to do this is with Github's CLI tool called "hub".

Create Repos on Github from the CLI with hub

ZSH allows you to write functions to wrap around common commands. These allow you to easiest invoke a number of lesson creation steps by only typing out the command.

Automate Lesson Creation From Templates With ZSH Functions

Once you've finished your demo locally, it's time to commit, push it to github, and share your demo online. This zsh function breaks it down into a single call.

Branch and Create a Lesson in a Single ZSH Function

Forgetting to pass an argument to a zsh function could result in creating unnecessary folders or cloning code you didn't mean to. It's best to check for arguments to prevent unwanted results.

Add Conditions to ZSH Functions to Prevent Mistakes

Using Alfred, you can map a global keyboard shortcut to the process of cloning a lesson template repo and firing up your demo.

Launch a New Lesson From a Keyboard Shortcut

Alfred is a super speed booster when it comes to common tasks. If you're going to be creating a lot of lessons from templates, Alfred can save you from even opening your terminal.

Select a Lesson Template From an Alfred Workflow

There are many, many Node utilities out there that you may want to use in your everyday workflow. You can wrap these utilities with simple command line APIs to expose them to the rest of your computer.

Create a Command Line Tool for Your Favorite Node Utility

Rather than taking the time to open the terminal to type out a command, let's create a vs code extension that will do that for us!

Create a VS Code Extension to Pass Arguments to the Terminal

Storing all the links to each repo and codesandbox inside of a markdown file will make it much easier to track where every lesson lives. This lesson walks you through using a zsh function to write out your info to a playlist.md file.

Write Your Lesson Information to a Markdown File From a ZSH Function

Ripple Delete is the most common command you will perform when editing with Screenflow, thus we should make it the simplest action to perform. Unfortunately, it requires a mouse click + shift and a command + delete. We can bind this sequence to a right mouse click using Karabiner mappings.

Speed Editing in Screenflow by Remapping Your Mouse with Karabiner

The second most common action is dragging around the timeline. We can use karabiner for this sequence with the :afterup hook to make sure it switches back to our arrow once we're done dragging.

Automate Everything: An egghead Guide to Productivity

John Lindquist

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