Now it's season of thinking (at least for my known circle) for improving productivity in workplaces. It happened to me to read few chapters in a book by Neal ford, called "The Productive Programmer" A somehow very informative book on introducing various tools which can actually help in increasing the productivity.
I still love command line tools, pretty fast, low memory footprint. Over the years, i always try to create batch files are shell scripts for my routine work, like start various servers with different settings, invoking project build, folder syncing. Once i create them, i put all together in one folder and make the folder available in the PATH. That's all. The problem i was facing with this approach, Whenever i change my machine, it was hard for me to transfer them in to my new machine and make them work as the path changes.
So i decided to give a try to launchers. I tried several application launchers and i settled with Launchy, pretty decent tool then. Though i like it's simple UI, It doesn't completey solve my needs. When i looked at Executor, i was impressed and currently playing with it. At first glance, it's UI looks simple and skinnable(I'm not a fan of fancy skins, but it allows me to choose my colors), its feature list also impressive. Mostly I'll end up with Executor.
Another application launcher is ENSO is worth to give a try. it may be strong by features, for me it is not user friendly.
Until next time,
Arunachalam
