30 Keyboard Shortcuts to Turbocharge Your Team’s Engineering Velocity
Every developer knows a shortcut or two that makes the job just a little bit easier. While those new to the industry might dream of a time in the far-off future when their fingers are the limiting factor to their coding output, a seasoned veteran can light up a keyboard like a jazz musician improvising over a familiar melody. I’ve overheard engineers let out an audible gasp the first time they see a coworker lay down a novel key combination. The look on their face tells the entire story: Just think of how much time we could have saved! If only I’d known!
Shortcuts allow us to spend more time focusing on the important aspects of software engineering — and over the span of a career spent largely in front of a keyboard, they compound to save us hours, days, or even weeks of development time.
When widely used across an engineering team, shortcuts can significantly increase engineering velocity and output. And yet, our tendency as developers is often to hoard them, holding them close like competing magicians guarding the secrets behind our sleight of hand. The goal of today’s post is to pull back this curtain, and divulge a few favorite tricks of the trade.
Now that we are less likely to be sharing the same physical space and picking up new techniques through office osmosis, I believe we have to become more explicit in sharing what works for us with our team mates. What follows are my most-used shortcuts that save me the most time. My hope is that you will find a few of them new and useful, and adopt them into your own repertoire.
Visual Studio Code
Navigation
cmd + b is a shortcut to open or close the workbench sidebar. We do this about a million times a day, so the time it saves can add up quickly. But not only can we do it faster, we can do it better, too! By moving the sidebar to the right, you can keep your code from jumping all over the screen when it opens, and therefore maintain better flow and focus.
For the uninitiated, use cmd + shift + p to open the command palette, and type “toggle sidebar position” to switch sides.
If you already know what you need from the sidebar, why bother opening it at all?
command + shift + eopens the file explorercommand + shift + fopens the search tabctrl + shift + gopens the source control tabcommand + shift + dopens the debuggercommand + shift + xopens the extensions tab
To open and close the terminal panel, you can control + `, and command + \ opens a new panel in either the terminal panel or the text editor.
command + shift + f searches text in the entire project, whilecommand + p searches for filenames within the project.
Text Editing
Many developers are familiar with multiple cursors, and that command + d can select multiple instances of the same string of text. However, less well known is the fact that you can skip the next matching instance with command + k, or that you can cut to the chase and select all instances of a particular string with command + shift + l.
f2 renames all ‘symbols’ across files, but only affects linked symbols. For example, if I want to rename a component that is referenced in several parent components, I can highlight the component, press f2 and type the new name I want, and it will update everywhere that component is imported as well (you just have to save those files since they are changed). If there is another element with the same name in another file, it will not be updated.
option + up/down will move the selected line of code (or highlighted block) up and down.
highlight block + { will wrap the highlighted block in {}. You can also use this for [] and for ().
Chrome Dev Tools
f12 opens dev tools (remember, if you have a touch bar, you will need to hold down the fn key to see those function keys).
cmd + shift + p switches between tabs (network, sources, etc). There are also a number of commands that you can run with this shortcut (eg dock to bottom/left/etc) — and you can see if there is an existing shortcut for that command on the righthand side of the results.
cmd + option + → lets you use the left and right arrow keys to navigate between tabs. This also works for switching tabs within VSCode.
cmd + l to focus on the browser URL.
cmd + shift + t open the last closed tab (press again to open the next one, etc..).
Slack
cmd + k quickly jump to DM or channel.
cmd + shift + k search DMs.
cmd + shift + t search threads.
cmd + shift + m search mentions and reactions.
cmd [ to go back in history (cmd ] to go forward in history).
e edits a message you already sent (needs to be highlighted — you can highlight by using the up/down arrow keys).
I hope that you find some of these shortcuts useful and that they save you lots of time! Like every new skill, you’ll want to adopt them incrementally, incorporating a few new shortcuts each week.
I’d also love to hear any feedback, so please comment below to share any shortcuts that you frequently use, or if you have a more efficient way of accomplishing any of these tasks.
Thanks for reading, and happy coding!
Mitchell graduated from Babson College in 2018 with a degree in Finance, and joined Restaurant Brands International through their Leadership Development Program. Because of his interest in tech, RBI enrolled him in an intensive web development bootcamp, and in 2019 he joined the consumer tech group as a Software Engineer.
See Software Engineering Opportunities at Restaurant Brands International.
