Ask HN: What are some tools you wish you had while doing your day to day work?
3 by deviance | 1 comments on Hacker News.
(as a software developer or just someone using software, in whatever field you happen to be working in). An example: -> As a software developer, I've come across the need to work with CSV-"like" files several times in my career (at several different jobs), for different reasons. And it was most frustrating when they had like 100 columns or so. Having to change column 63 at line 58 is not something you do easily in Notepad++. Import to Excel was my way to go, but since the file was not a standard CSV file (e.g. also had sections like an .INI file) it was time consuming: first just select a subsection from the file, save to a different file, import to Excel, modify, paste back, etc. Maybe it was not the best approach, but that's not the point I'm making. Not having found an existing tool (maybe my problem was too specific) I eventually made a small desktop application which I would use to edit the files directly. The interface was similar to Excel (grid of cells); It was simple and tailored to what I needed. But maybe you are not a software developer and don't have the "luxury" of building it yourself. So, would you share your experience of similar situations? If the solutions to your problems are relatively easy to implement, then someone can create a tool for the job, making your life easier. And on the off chance that these tools are useful and will be wanted by more people (with similar problems) these "tools" can turn into a more general "product", thus a win-win situation in the end. What i'm saying: - There are already talented people working in their spare time on e.g. open-source projects (no shortage of people wanting to tackle the problem, if it is reasonable) - The shortcoming is that domain specific problems, which people are facing, are not visible enough (except to them). If this question should get enough attention and answers, the next step would be to structure the answers into a git repository/website.