How to: Code with superhuman speed

If you are a web developer/designer, or programmer, there are certain codes you probably need to type repeatably.

To increase productivity, you can set up code snippets and shortcuts with your favorite code editor or a text substitution software. So you can quickly type a few lines of codes with a simple phrases or shortcut you defined. This will save you a lot of precious time.

Software-specific text substitution

Depending on the software, your favorite code editor might already offer code snippets features. These are software-specific features, for system wide text substitution, scroll down to System wide text substitution.

Since I only use these two programs, I will show you how to set up in Dreamweaver and Coda.

In Coda

1. On the bottom you can see a Clips icon. Click on it to open the Clips window.

2. As you can see, the Clips window comes with some already built-in snippets. Double click on one, the code will be entered.

3. You can edit each snippet by clicking the i icon. This is what you will see. See here I set the shortcut to lorem Tab. when I type lorem then hit Tab key, all these text will be entered. You can set the shortcut key by click on where lorem Tab is on the picture above. Then just input what ever you want it to be.

In Dreamweaver

1. This is the snippets panel in Dreamweaver. You can active it from menu Windows ->Snippets. There are quite a few buid-in snippets already. Right click on any of them and choose Edit Keyboard Shortcuts .

2. In order to edit the keyboard Shortcuts in Dreamweaver, You need to create a new Shortcuts set. Simply Click the first icon to Duplicate set.

3. As you see the picture above, I first selected the snippet that I want to assign shortcut to, then entered the shortcut in the Press Key field.

System wide text substitution

There are also solutions for system-wide text substitution. [Mac/Win/Linux]

For OS X
Snow Leopard Build-in Feature: System Preferences -> Language & Text -> Text. It will work in TextEdit, but not other programs.
TextExpander : One of the best text substition app on Mac from what I heard. It offer a free 30-day trial.
FastFox : I never used it before, but it seams work for both Mac and Win.

For Windows
Texter : 100% Free. Made by Adam Pash from Lifhacker.
FastFox : I never used it before, but it seams work for both Mac and Win.

For Linux
Vim: I never used this one but hopefuly this link is helpful.

Video: How I Can Code Twice As Fast As You by  Jeffery Way from Net.Tutsplus

If you know any other software that works for you, share it with us in a comment. Hope you enjoyed this article.