One of the most important things I learn from demos and show & tells are frequently not what the presenter meant to put across, but all the minor things that show up when they’re setting up their machine, and moving around it to show what they need to. Windows has a way to disable notifications? What’s that editor? Woah, how’d you format that file? Outlook has a dark mode??

These are often things you don’t know existed, or that you wanted. I’ve found (or accidentally presented), for example:

  • how to get a SQL Server locally (LocalDB)
  • how to move at the word level in Windows (Ctrl-Left and Ctrl-Right; it’s Alt-B and Alt-F in Linux (Emacs))
  • how to disable notifications (e.g. Slack) (“Quiet Hours”, now renamed “Focus Assist”, in the Action Center (lower right corner of the task bar))
  • how to format Gherkin files (in VSCode, using a configured version of Alex Krechik’s Cucumber extension, with some changes to fix a few bugs, since committed back upstream)