One of the greatest virtues in a programmer's life is laziness, as opined by Perl creator Larry Wall. Well, he is not the only one who thinks so. Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates is also of the same opinion. If a programmer is great in his/her work, it means they have turned their laziness into such efficiencies that the world remembers forever and ever. Well what does it mean actually that a lazy programmer is always a great programmer? It means these programmers spend a little more time while coding so that a lot more time can be saved in the long run to spend lazily. Here are seven such ways that the best developers in the world use to save time, efforts and so on.




They think it in a bigger way: 

When the programmers are given a problem to solve, which obviously doesn't require direct coding, a lazy programmer first sits back and thinks about it in a bigger way. The programmer wonders if the bug, which is asked to be fixed, has a symptom to lead to a larger issue in future or not. They may also think about some improvements to the software or the program so that such problem-solving time can be saved later.

They are fond of keyboard shortcuts: 

Mouse-driven commands are gone and it's time to code with keyboard shortcuts. These shortcuts help reduce efforts and obviously programmers love them. These shortcuts are also helpful in improving their productivity. If mouse is used less, then repetitive stress factor can also be reduced to a large extent.

They refer to Google for any help: 

Reading manuals and documentation is always a big NO for programmers, just like anyone else in the world. That's why they find Internet a better and a faster option to get any kind of help. There are several websites which are dedicated to programmers like Stack Overflow. These websites save substantial amount of time as they are one-stop solutions full of information. Developers find online search the most vital tool in their journey.

They usually reuse code: 

Reinvention is not very popular among developers and that's why they prefer to reuse the existing code. The reused code can be their own or someone else's too. Some code are written to get reused and sometimes developers simply copy and paste code too. Reusing code can actually come out with better results.

More and more automation: 

Repetitive tasks are very common in a developer's life, which get mundane with time. These repetitive tasks are time-consuming and monotonous too. Thus developers automate these tasks through scripts which can save time for them in the long run, though automation takes a lot of time and efforts in the short run. Writing a script is a challenging and an enjoyable task too.

Frequent re-factoring: 

To restructure a code is not at all a lazy or an easy task but lazy programmers are fond of frequent re-factoring because it saves lot of time in the long run. Future development becomes faster and bug fixes also become simpler. It's best to do the re-factoring job on a regular basis, else it takes lot of energy and time if its size enlarges.

They use source control software: 

It's a painful job to track changes to source code files manually. If more than one developers are involved in the process, then it becomes more torturous. But if one has to rewrite code after it gets deleted or overwritten, then it becomes much more strenuous. As the source control software saves time as well as pain by automating change tracking and eliminating code rewrites, lazy or rather clever programmers always use this software.

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