Advice for PC configuration

Tips that can make code development little bit easier and more efficient regardless of programing language, OS and your experience.

Make your username easy to type

Make it short, use small letters, use only latin symbols, avoid using spaces or special symbols.

My username on any PC is maxim (5 symbols, no capital letters, no spaces, no special symbols).

You will probably have to type your username in a system terminal quite often. Keeping it simple will save you time and your little finger.

Sometimes you need to type a directory path in a terminal. Some terminals require quotes if the path contains space.

cd ./username/
cd "./user name/"

Removing space from path name will save you some more time.

The same advice can be applied to any directory, file name, name of your project and other names you will have to type often.

file names and directories

Same advice can be applied to any file and directory name. Try to keep it short, avoid unicode, spaces or other special symbols.

Keep the source code closer to disc root

I recommend to keep all your development projects closer to disc root. It will simplify navigation and allow to avoid errors with old programs.

I keep my development projects at:

D:\src

Some old analysis programs often used in engineering have limitations for the length of file path. For example XFOIL and AVL will not run if the path length is longer than 40 symbols.

AVL cannot open this file:

D:\my-study\classes\aircraft-design\design-code\avl-input-file.txt

But it will open this

D:\src\design-code\avl-inp.txt