sebastiandaschner news

Welcome to the first newsletter in 2023!

For me the “Zeit zwischen den Jahren” (“time between the years”, referring to the days between Christmas and New Year’s day plus in general some days around) was quite relaxed, and besides a one-week offline trip to Slovenia with my wife, these days were mostly working days, preparing new content, creating videos, and planning for 2023.

Since Thursday, there is the online jChampions Conference going on, a free conference with sessions by Java Champions only, for which yours truly will also give a session (Tuesday 4 pm CET) on the topic of productivity: Principles of Effective Developers. I think this is going to be a fun one, 45 minutes full of productivity tips, so join us!

This newsletter episode will also be full of productivity-focused content on command line tips and other things.

What’s New

Command Line Scripts and Automation in My Setup

I’ve published a video on in which I’ve put together some command line scripts and automation helpers from my setup that are part of my everyday work. I find these type of examples helpful to watch to get some inspiration for one’s own setup, so I compiled a list for myself:

Helpful Command Line Scripts and Automation in My Setup

To give you a sneak peek, here’s one that I use to calculate time zones quickly on the command line, without opening a website:

Of course, the mentioned scripts can be found on GitHub, on my dotfiles repository.

Helpful Command Line Scripts and Automation in My Setup

My Most Used CLI Commands

Similarly to the previous topic, I’ve also compiled a list of commands that I keep using all the time. I find it quite interesting to have a look at one’s shell history file once in a while, and see whether there is an easier way around, such as defining aliases or using shortcuts.

My Most Used CLI Commands

This list contains mostly Unix commands and other shell features such as piping or globbing, and I think can help even if one just seldomly uses the command line.

Quickly Extracting Html Content With xmllint

On the command line, xmllint is a helpful tool to format and extract XML, but it can also work with HTML markup. In order to extract the content of individual tags, you can use XPath expressions:

This extracts the text content of the first <h1> tag and supresses any warnings on invalid HTML.

I use this for example to quickly extract the titles of my blog posts:

Yet another helpful tool to have in one’s command line belt.

The Effective Developer Podcast -- Most Listened Episodes 2022

If you like listening to podcasts, for example while doing stuff around the house, taking a walk, or relaxing on the couch, you might want to check out The Effective Developer Podcast. In this podcast, we talk about all things developer productivity, usually shorter episodes of 6-12 minutes, but also interviews with folks in the IT space.

These were the most listened episodes in 2022

You can checkout The Effective Developer podcast on all major platforms.

Developer Productivity Masterclass

If you find these tips and videos on developer productivity helpful, maybe you want to have a look at my on-demand video course on this topic.

Developer Productivity Masterclass

This is a 14-hour deep-dive for any software developer who wants to get on the next level in how effectively they’re doing their work.

We’ll cover which parts make our job as developer the most worthwhile, how to leverage automation, why to care about the keyboard, how to minimize context switches and distractions, how to build up a perfect workplace, how to improve your knowledge, skills, and focus, and much more. You can check out the detailed curriculum: Developer Productivity Masterclass

Thanks a lot for reading and see you next time!