Mike Bifulco: This is Tiny Improvements.

I'm Mike by ko

Growing up.

I spent a lot of time in
the garage with my dad.

He's a man of many projects and hardly
a weekend went past where I wasn't

helping them work on something from
cars to household repairs, to lawn

work, to tinkering with electronics.

I learned a lot about
tools and how to use them.

And I learned that the right tool for
the job can make all the difference.

There were two things that
he always used to tell me.

First power tools are
always out to get you.

They may feel like they'll help get
the job done fast, but they're powerful

and they don't care about your fingers.

Respect them and act as though
they're always trying to hurt you.

Second.

There's nothing worse than
having to fix your tools.

If you take care of your tools,
they'll take care of you.

Keep them clean, sharp
and in good working order.

These are both true.

And while rule number one is less
applicable to software tools.

Rule number two is absolutely
something that I've found to be true

in my career as a software engineer.

The tools we use to get our work done
are incredibly important and taking the

time to tune them to work just right.

Can make a huge difference in
our productivity and happiness.

Tuning your tools just feels good.

I use visual studio code for nearly
all of my coding and writing.

I love it because it's quick and
customizable and it just works.

Well, no shade.

If you're a fan of VIM, you do, you.

I dig vs code and I've spent
some time recently changing up

my setup to make it even better.

Here's a few of the things I've done
recently to tune my vs code experience.

The

Houston theme.

There is an installed theme for vs
code called Houston, which was actually

made by the team that makes Astro.

If you prefer a dark theme and
like some spicy neon accent

colors, you might like Houston.

Zen mode.

Is that mode for vs code is a great way
to tune your IDE to be more focused.

I use it for writing
articles and newsletters.

It's built into vs code.

So you don't even need to install
anything, just press command, K, and then

Z to enter Zen mode or use the command
palette and type in toggles and mode.

Straight out of the box.

Zen mode is pretty damn minimal
and that's not for everyone.

Myself included.

You can customize InMode by opening up
vs code settings with command comma,

and then searching for Zen mode.

There's a number of settings within
there that you can use to do things

like center the layout, make it
go to full screen mode, hide the

activity bar, hide line numbers.

You name it.

Next up pieces for vs code.

Pieces is amazing.

It's a contextualized note-taking app and
code copilot that helps you store annotate

and generate code snippets in your IDE.

Not only is it context aware as in
it knows what you're working on and

as well as the places where you're
doing research, but it also features

an on-device privacy first LLM that
can generate code snippets and notes

without sending your data to the cloud.

That's pretty cool.

If pieces sounds familiar, you probably
know about it because of my interview

with their founder, salvo, not on software
engineering daily, a few months back.

And definitely not from Scott.

Hanselman's recent podcast about it.

No shade to Scott.

I think it's a good idea to get
your tools to a place where you're

happy using them for you that
might mean that you're already set

for other people, it might mean toggling
every setting and making everything

just so, so that they feel at home.

Like that says you should
keep two things in mind.

The pointy tools are always out to get you
and the ones that you really want to use

all the time should be ready to be used.

So make sure they're
in good working order.

And the next time you pick up a project
to work on, you'll be much happier for it.

In the end, if you're happy
doing your work, that's all

that should really matter.

If you end up spending some time
customizing your IDE, I'd love it.

If you shot me a message about it, you
can email me at hello@mikebifulco.com

or find me on threads at irreverent.

Mike.

Thanks so much.