As part of the Microsoft Create: Serverless conference, we just wrapped up the "Open Mic Session 5 - Developer Hacks and Tools we wished we knew sooner" session. I was happy to co-host this one with Marie Hoeger and we had a group of about 20 people sharing for 45 minutes the things that make them more effective as developers.

Here is a dump of all the cool things we talked about, in case you also want to get more effective.

The big topics where learning about keyboard shortcuts, features of developer tools you may not know about and extensions for both the browser and Visual Studio Code.

 General tips:

• PowerToys recently added a video conference tool. you can mute / un-mute and turn on/off your cam across Teams or Zoom calls.
• Running EasyAuth locally is a blog post about setting up a docker instance to test EasyAuth
• Azure Functions Input Binding for JWT Tokens - an Azure Functions binding validating JWT Tokens for HTTP Triggered Azure Functions.
• Running a business on the power on PowerPlatform and Azure Functions

Keyboard shortcuts:

• Ctrl|CMD + Shift + V toggles the Microphone in Microsoft Teams with - much more responsive than the icon
• Ctrl|CMD + Shift + V pastes content into Microsoft Teams chats without formatting
• Ctrl|CMD + Shift + Alt|Option + ArrowUP (or down) for multi-line editing in VS code
• Alt|Option + ArrowUp (or ArrowDown) moves the line of code in your document and keeps the indentation
• Alt|Option + Shift + ArrowDown + duplicates the current line

Browser Extensions:

• Tabagotchi - a Tamagotchi in your browser whose mood depends on your amount of tabs. Fewer tabs: happy Tamagotchi, more tabs: angry Tamagotchi.
• Accessibility Insights is an extension to test the accessibility of your web product and file bugs directly from the interface.
• Test and feedback is an extension for Azure DevOps to capture findings, create issues, and collaborate with the team, directly from the browser.

VS Code extensions

• Microsoft Edge Developer Tools for VS Code embeds the visual tools of the browser (like the CSS editor) right into VS Code without having to jump from editor to browser and back all the time
• Webhint for VS Code embeds Webhint into your code and tells you while you develop if you are doing things wrong in terms of accessibiity, performance, app-readiness, compatibility and more.
• REST Client for VS Code allows you to run REST requests directly from source code
• Error Lens shows errors with explanations directly on the line of code they happen
• Bracket Pair Colorizer shows nested brackets in different colours making it easier to navigate your code
• TypeScript Export All Modules - VSCode extension which generates an index.ts file with all the module exports from the current directory.
• Front Matter - simplifies working with front matter of your articles. Useful extension when you are using a static site generator like: Hugo, Jekyll, Hexo, NextJs, Gatsby, and many more...
• MarkdownLint - Markdown linting and style checking for Visual Studio Code

It was fun to run such an informal session and I want to thank everybody involved.