Every good analyst loves efficiency. The faster you get your work done, the more time you can spend on that pet project you've been itching to dive into.
So how can you work faster? Having the right tools is a good start. One tool every analyst should have is a good text editor, and Sublime Text is one of the best.
Don't have Sublime Text? Download it right now. Why? Here are 6 reasons:
Sublime Text WILL make you more productive. Of all of the features that Sublime Text offers, Multiple Selection Editing has to be the most mind-blowing. With a few keyboard shortcuts, you can quickly type 10 similar-but-different lines of code. Or reshape a 400+ line SQL statement into something that is easily readable. These tasks could take hours with other text editors.
Don't believe me? Check out the example on the Sublime Text home page.
Sublime Text is fast. Like, really fast. If you use Notepad, you have probably waited a few seconds for a file to load, then groaned when you had to slowly scroll through the file until you found (or didn't find) what you were looking for. In Sublime Text, small-to-medium sized files open instantly and can be scrolled through with little-to-no lag.
Sublime's home page contains a GIF showing it opening a 7MB text file with 200k lines of text almost instantly; from there, a keyboard shortcut is used to jump to a symbol on line 199,153.
I mean, WOW. Check out the GIF here.
Analysts and data scientists work with files written in Python, R, SQL, JSON, XML, and other languages. Sublime Text has built-in syntax highlighting for all of these and more, making them easier to read and write - even if the language / file type isn't your favorite.
Being able to quickly read and, more importantly, make sense of different file types will make you faster and more productive.
Do you catch yourself writing the same thing multiple times, maybe with some slight variations? Snippets are your new best friend. Snippets are pre-written chunks of text, code, etc. which you can easily insert as you're typing. Once inserted, you can use tab to quickly edit pre-designated pieces of the snippet.
As an example, let's say you always start your code with a header containing the file name, description, and a confidentiality statement. The confidentiality statement contains a lot of words that will rarely change; however, file names and file descriptions will always be different. With snippets, you can insert your header with a couple of keystrokes, then edit the placeholders for file name and file description using the tab key.
A great article on snippets can be viewed here.
Most tools have keyboard shortcuts for most things. Sublime Text has keyboard shortcuts for, well, EVERYTHING. My two favorites are:
Get a copy of the Sublime Text cheat sheet here.
One of the coolest things about Sublime Text is how customizable it is. Many pre-built customizations are available and can be installed as "Packages" using a built-in utility called Package Control - all without leaving Sublime Text.
If you write a lot of code, you've probably used Git. Package Control offers a package simply called "Git" which allows you to use Github without ever leaving Sublime Text.
More about packages can be found here.
This article was originally published on www.mattmichaelson.com on June 5, 2020, with permission to republish on www.continuus-technologies.com.