As mentioned, YASnippet’s popular for programming. You can take advantage of existing collections of snippets for different programming modes (ex: AndreaCrotti’s collection), or you can define your own.

I’d like to get better at developing single-page applications using AngularJS, Twitter Bootstrap / Zurb Foundation, and NodeJS. YASnippet might let me quickly put together short applications and test suites. If I get my workflow smooth enough, I might even be able to do an app-a-week (or app-a-day) sprint for deliberate practice. There are often lots of fiddly little syntax or keyword things that I look up while writing code. While practising typing those things in again and again will help me memorize them, there’s also some value in automating that part with snippets so that I can focus on the core skills of designing and implementing small web applications.

YASnippet might also be able to help me use Org Mode to keep track of ideas for features or small web applications throughout the implementation process. I wonder if I should implement this using lots of subtasks or using TODO states with logs. TODO states might be easier to filter or visualize with the kanban package for Org Mode. Maybe I’ll try both approaches. In any case, checklists will help me remember to think about designs and tests before implementing the code, and maybe I can keep track of deployment notes, lessons learned, and follow-up tasks.

I find checklists to be really helpful when setting up live videocasts. I’m usually too frazzled to think of all the steps I need to do at the last minute. Paper checklists are good because I can refer to them while keeping my screen ready to be recorded. Still, an Org Mode-based checklist (possibly with dynamic date fields and e-mail templates provided by YASnippet) might go a long way towards standardizing the before- and after-event process, and that might in turn reduce the friction enough for me to do more of them. Both Emacs Chats and Emacs Hangouts seem to be popular, so it would be good to get more of these on the go.

The process would be something like:

1. Reach out to the person who’s going to be featured on the Emacs Chat, or at least one other person who’s willing to be there for the Emacs Hangout (so that I don’t end up talking to myself for the first ten minutes, which is Awkward)
2. Figure out what will be discussed (for Emacs Chats)
3. Set up a time, considering timezones
4. Set up the Google+ event page
5. Update the Google Calendar
6. Post a notice on Twitter and on my blog (I’ve been forgetting to do this step)
7. On the day of the event
   1. Do the last-minute push (I’ve been forgetting to do this as well)
   2. Create the Google Hangout on Air
   3. Set it up for Q&A
   4. Invite the other person in for Emacs Chats, or post the URL for Emacs Hangouts
   5. Host the video chat
   6. Remind people where the recording can be found
   7. Update the Google+ page with the link to the next thing
8. Extract the MP3 from the video, change the properties, and upload it to archive.org
9. Post a blog post with the embedded video, podcast audio, and quick notes
10. Transcribe the video or pay for transcription
11. Edit the transcript
12. Update the post with the transcript
13. Update the Google+ event page with the link to the transcript, post to social networks (I’ve been forgetting this)
14. Update EmacsLife.com, too (yet another thing I’ve been forgetting)

I think it would be totally awesome to get to the point where I can call an Emacs Lisp function that would Do The Right Thing at that point, like posting to Twitter or using something like org-trello to make a Trello card and assign it to the person who does my transcriptions.

I’m getting the hang of using outlines to write (and I should post a video about this soon), but it might be even cooler if I can get the hang of writing with more structure. For example, Michael Hyatt posted this blog post checklist that he had been using with Evernote. I like it because:

• The template asks you to be explicit about the post’s objective and subject.
• It encourages you to add more illustrations, links, and stories.
• It reminds you to take steps that you might otherwise skip, and you might spend several days revising the post.

I might not use it for every post, but it’s good to flesh out some ideas further, especially the ones where I think I’m onto something particularly interesting.

It would be even cooler if I could take advantage of YASnippet’s dynamic Emacs Lisp evaluation to remind me of relevant links from my blog post outline given the category. I remember playing around with the Remembrance Agent, which monitored a few hundred words around your cursor and brought up files that had similar words. Matching on category isn’t going to be anywhere as sophisticated, but it still might be a good way to refresh my memory. Even if I had a quick Emacs Lisp interactive function that read whatever category property I’d set (chosen from the org-refile-able targets) and displayed the section from my blog post index in another window, I think that would be a pretty neat start.

I tend to draft posts within my sharing outline (which I sporadically publish at http://pages.sachachua.com/sharing/). When I’m done, I delete the subtree, sometimes replacing it with a link to the post to help me follow up on it in the future. This means losing that metadata, though. It might be interesting to keep the metadata so that I can review the goals and backstory of a blog post.

YASnippet can also help me keep track of the TODOs related to a post as well. For example, I might want to come up with sketches, tweet links, or follow up on ideas. If I use a YASnippet to plan my blog post in the first place, then I can create a TODO (possibly with a link back to the blog post) that I could leave in place or refile to the appropriate location in my regular Org Mode files.

I don’t think YASnippet dynamic fields persist after the file is saved and reloaded, though. How would that work if I need to change things? Maybe I can use multiple-cursors to mark all the matching text in the subtree, or do other clever things with it…

Okay. It looks like setting up YASnippet for Emacs checklists would probably give me the quickest win. Programming is also pretty straightforward. Writing might be interesting too, if I can get the hang of working with that kind of structure. Let’s see how that goes. Once I figure out what those snippets will be like, I’ll post them on Github somewhere. =)

Is YASnippet part of your workflow? Have any thoughts, suggestions, or neat stories?