Notes: Week of March 21

A short list of things that caught my attention this week:

espanso
I've used a service called TextExpander for years. It's a simple, but powerful tool for text replacement that works as you type. Example: When I type ;date, TextExpander automatically replaces it with today's date in the format YYYYMMDD. I have dozens of little snippets like this that save me hours each month.

Espanso is an open-source competitor. It doesn't have all of TextExpander's functionality, but it has the features that I use the most (i.e. simple text replacement and input forms).

I like that espanso is open source. I like that it's cross-platform, and I like that it's free. I like it so much that I've let my TextExpander subscription lapse.

The dispassionate developer
Blog posts like this always get my attention. I'm especially susceptible to this brand of "turns out" style blog post.

The TL;DR is that being a good, healthy software developer doesn't require dedicating your non-working hours to code. I already know this, but it's good to be reminded.

Blog Surf
Exploring the Internet was one of my favorite pastimes in the early 2000s. I spent countless hours "stumbling" from one random website to the next. I miss StumbleUpon.

Blog Surf isn't StumbleUpon, but it is a good way to find new, interesting blogs written by real people.