TextExpander is a great tool and I now use it daily. Actually I use it so often I don’t think I could live without it. 
When I first started out I started creating snippets for common email reply’s. Thanks for contacting us, instructions for resetting a password, etc. That alone is worth the money to buy this app but I have since added lots more snippets that I use.
The first group of custom snippets I use is for our forums which uses vBulletin. Some common tasks on it is typing [quote], [code], [php], tags. It doesn’t take that long to write them out but typing ,[q is a whole lot quicker.
So I have bundled up the snippet group and added it as a download to hopefully benefit some of you. Keep in mind this is really basic and only includes a few tags. Mainly the ones that I use most.
Here is a list of the ones included:
,[q - [quote] [/quote]
,[c - [code] [/code]
,[b - [b] [/b]
,[p - [php] [/php]
,[l - [list] [*] [/list]
Download
Download Now | Latest Release: v1.0
If you have any to add please pass them along.
I have been working with jQuery recently because we are going to be using it in the 4.1 release of 68 Classifieds. One of the things I couldn’t get my head around was how to pass the id of a database record to a jQuery click function.
For example in regular javascript I had: Read more…
Another effective technique is to explain your code to someone else. This will often cause you to explain the bug to yourself. Sometimes it takes no more than a few sentences, followed by an embarrassed “Never mind, I see what’s wrong. Sorry to bother you.” This works remarkably well; you can even use non-programmers as listeners. One university computer center kept a teddy bear near the help desk. Students with mysterious bugs were required to explain them to the bear before they could speak to a human counselor.
— Brian Kernighan and Rob Pike
This is something I do a lot and never really realized it.
I found this interesting blog post today: Whatever you write today will become legacy
That post is so true and really hits home. This past week we upgraded our server and had some sites that was running a php script I developed back in 2002. Boy was it a headache to get it back up and running to today’s standards. The whole time I was saying to myself WTF who in their right mind would have created this.
It just goes to show you how code you develop today royally sucks in a few years.